In the previous posts, we have just seen the use of type wrappers in wrapping the primitive data types. Beginning in J2SE 5.0, we will not have to explicitly perform such wrapping. The wrapping/unwrapping is now implicit and automatic.

For example, to wrap an integer constant 100 into an Integer type, prior to J2SE 5.0 you would use the following code:

Integer a = new Integer(100);

Now, with the autoboxing feature introduced in J2SE 5.0, we can achieve the same with the following code:

Integer a = 100;                                 

Here, the number 100 is encapsulated into an Integer type and assigned to the variable a. There is no need to use the new keyword. To unwrap the contents of Integer, prior to J2SE 5.0, we would have used the following statement:

int i = a.intValue();

Now, we would simply type the following:

int i = a;

Very neat and clean, isn’t it?

The process of wrapping a primitive data type into its corresponding type wrapper class is called auto-boxing, and the opposite process of extracting the wrapped primitive type from an object is called unboxing.

This implicit boxing/unboxing works in all situations wherever such an action is necessary. For example, we can freely mix the objects and the primitive types in an arithmetic expression. Consider the following code fragment:

Integer a = new Integer(100);
int b = 200;
Integer c = a + b;

private static Integer adder(Integer a, Integer b) {

return a + b;

}

public class Autobox {

                     public static void main(String args[]) throws Exception {
                             System.out.println("Demonstrating power of autoboxing/unboxing");
                             Integer a = 100;
                             int b = 200;
                             int c = a + b;
                             System.out.println("Autoboxing in action: arithmetic expressions");
                            System.out.printf("%d + %d = %d%n%n", a, b, c);
                             System.out.println("Autoboxing in action: "
                                                + "method parameters and return types");
                             System.out.printf("%d + %d = %d%n", a, b, adder(a, b));

                     }

                     private static Integer adder(Integer a, Integer b) {
                             return a + b;
                     }



}