double is made of 1 bit sign 52 bit mantissa and 11 bit exponent and long is made of 1 bit sign and 63 bit number. So double can have larger values, and they both take 64 bits in your memory. So double has the precision of at most 16 digits and long of at most 19 digits. (Also, a double can have a value of Infinity) If you're looking for an object that can store very large numbers, use BigInteger or BigDecimal, their value is only limited by how much memory your computer has and they can do precise math. Answer from Chemical-Asparagus58 on reddit.com
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7

The absolute quantity of information that you can store in 64 bit is of course the same.

What changes is the meaning you assign to the bits.

In an integer or long variable, the codification used is the same you use for decimal numbers in your normal life, with the exception of the fact that number two complement is used, but this doesn't change that much, since it's only a trick to gain an additional number (while storing just one zero instead that a positive and a negative).

In a float or double variable, bits are split in two kinds: the mantissa and the exponent. This means that every double number is shaped like XXXXYYYYY where it's numerical value is something like XXXX*2^YYYY. Basically you decide to encode them in a different way, what you obtain is that you have the same amount of values but they are distribuited in a different way over the whole set of real numbers.

The fact that the largest/smallest value of a floating number is larger/smaller of the largest/smalles value of a integer number doesn't imply anything on the amount of data effectively stored.

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2

A double can store a larger number by having larger intervals between the numbers it can store, essentially. Not every integer in the range of a double is representable by that double.

More specifically, a double has one bit (S) to store sign, 11 bits to store an exponent E, and 52 bits of precision, in what is called the mantissa (M).

For most numbers (There are some special cases), a double stores the number (-1)^S * (1 + (M * 2^{-52})) * 2^{E - 1023}, and as such, when E is large, changing M by one will make a much larger change in the size of the resulting number than one. These large gaps are what give doubles a larger range than longs.

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Oracle
docs.oracle.com › javase › tutorial › java › nutsandbolts › datatypes.html
Primitive Data Types (The Java™ Tutorials > Learning the Java Language > Language Basics)
The Long class also contains methods ... unsigned long. float: The float data type is a single-precision 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point. Its range of values is beyond the scope of this discussion, but is specified in the Floating-Point Types, Formats, and Values section of the Java Language Specification. As with the recommendations for byte and short, use a float (instead of double) if you need ...
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TheServerSide
theserverside.com › blog › Coffee-Talk-Java-News-Stories-and-Opinions › Float-vs-Double-Whats-the-difference
Java double vs float: What's the difference?
The key difference between a float and double in Java is that a double can represent much larger numbers than a float. Both data types represent numbers with decimals, but a float is 32 bits in size while a double is 64 bits.
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W3Schools
w3schools.com › java › java_data_types.asp
Java Data Types
assert abstract boolean break byte case catch char class continue default do double else enum exports extends final finally float for if implements import instanceof int interface long module native new package private protected public return requires short static super switch synchronized this throw throws transient try var void volatile while Java String Methods
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Domo
community-forums.domo.com › home › community forums › archive
What the difference between double and long data types - Domo Community Forum
August 10, 2016 - I assume they are both floating point numbers?, but would like to know the capacities of each.
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26

If you are storing integers, use Long. Your statement that "Advantage of Using Double is that it gives a more wider range for storing Whole Numbers" is incorrect. Both are 64 bits long, but double has to use some bits for the exponent, leaving fewer bits to represent the magnitude. You can store larger numbers in a double but you will lose precision.

In other words, for numbers larger than some upper bound you can no longer store adjacent "whole numbers"... given an integer value above this threshold, the "next" possible double will be more than 1 greater than the previous number.

For example

public class Test1  
{

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception 
    {
        long   long1 = Long.MAX_VALUE - 100L;
        double dbl1  = long1;
        long   long2 = long1+1;
        double dbl2  = dbl1+1;
        double dbl3  = dbl2+Math.ulp(dbl2);

        System.out.printf("%d %d\n%f %f %f", long1, long2, dbl1, dbl2, dbl3);
    }

}

This outputs:

9223372036854775707 9223372036854775708
9223372036854776000.000000 9223372036854776000.000000 9223372036854778000.000000

Note that

  1. The double representation of Long.MAX_VALUE-100 does NOT equal the original value
  2. Adding 1 to the double representation of Long.MAX_VALUE-100 has no effect
  3. At this magnitude, the difference between one double and the next possible double value is 2000.

Another way of saying this is that long has just under 19 digits precision, while double has only 16 digits precision. Double can store numbers larger than 16 digits, but at the cost of truncation/rounding in the low-order digits.

If you need more than 19 digits precision you must resort to BigInteger, with the expected decrease in performance.

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3

This looks like the wrong battle:

From the Java Tutorial

The long data type is a 64-bit signed two's complement integer. It has a minimum value of -9,223,372,036,854,775,808 and a maximum value of 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 (inclusive).

That's pretty close to 19 significant digits

From Wikipedia

This gives from 15 - 17 significant decimal digits precision.

So, despite its apparent "superiority" Double will serve you worse than Long. And I'm merely guessing here, but intuitively I'd say serialization/deserialization of floating point types are costlier operations than the same operations on integral data types, but even if there are differences they will be quite small on modern systems.

So, when working with integers, stick to Long.

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Blogger
javahungry.blogspot.com › 2022 › 11 › long-vs-double.html
Java long vs double | Java Hungry
Moreover, one other difference between long and double in Java is that long stores whole numbers from -9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807 whereas double stores values from 1.7e-308 to 1.7e+038.
Find elsewhere
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Pediaa
pediaa.com › home › technology › it › programming › what is the difference between long and double in java
What is the Difference Between long and double in Java - Pediaa.Com
May 30, 2019 - It is similar to a float data type. Unlike, a float which stores 32 bit IEEE 745 floating point numbers, double stores 64-but IEEE 754 floating point numbers. It can store values from 1.7e-308 to 1.7e+038.
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Quora
quora.com › What-is-the-difference-between-an-int-a-long-a-double-and-a-decimal-in-Java
What is the difference between an int, a long, a double and a decimal in Java? - Quora
Answer (1 of 5): There are eight primitive datatypes supported by Java. Primitive datatypes are predefined by the language and named by a keyword. int * Int data type is a 32-bit signed two's complement integer. * Minimum value is - 2,147,483,648 (-2^31) * Maximum value is 2,147,483,647(incl...
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117

With the possible exception of "short", which arguably is a bit of a waste of space-- sometimes literally, they're all horses for courses:

  • Use an int when you don't need fractional numbers and you've no reason to use anything else; on most processors/OS configurations, this is the size of number that the machine can deal with most efficiently;
  • Use a double when you need fractional numbers and you've no reason to use anything else;
  • Use a char when you want to represent a character (or possibly rare cases where you need two-byte unsigned arithmetic);
  • Use a byte if either you specifically need to manipulate a signed byte (rare!), or when you need to move around a block of bytes;
  • Use a boolean when you need a simple "yes/no" flag;
  • Use a long for those occasions where you need a whole number, but where the magnitude could exceed 2 billion (file sizes, time measurements in milliseconds/nanoseconds, in advanced uses for compacting several pieces of data into a single number);
  • Use a float for those rare cases where you either (a) are storing a huge number of them and the memory saving is worthwhile, or (b) are performing a massive number of calculations, and can afford the loss in accuracy. For most applications, "float" offers very poor precision, but operations can be twice as fast -- it's worth testing this on your processor, though, to find that it's actually the case! [*]
  • Use a short if you really need 2-byte signed arithmetic. There aren't so many cases...

[*] For example, in Hotspot on Pentium architectures, float and double operations generally take exactly the same time, except for division.

Don't get too bogged down in the memory usage of these types unless you really understand it. For example:

  • every object size is rounded to 16 bytes in Hotspot, so an object with a single byte field will take up precisely the same space as a single object with a long or double field;
  • when passing parameters to a method, every type takes up 4 or 8 bytes on the stack: you won't save anything by changing a method parameter from, say, an int to a short! (I've seen people do this...)

Obviously, there are certain API calls (e.g. various calls for non-CPU intensive tasks that for some reason take floats) where you just have to pass it the type that it asks for...!

Note that String isn't a primitive type, so it doesn't really belong in this list.

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19

A java int is 32 bits, while a long is 64 bits, so when you need to represent integers larger than 2^31, long is your friend. For a typical example of the use of long, see System.currentTimeMillis()

A byte is 8 bits, and the smallest addressable entity on most modern hardware, so it is needed when reading binary data from a file.

A double has twice the size of a float, so you would usually use a double rather than a float, unless you have some restrictions on size or speed and a float has sufficient capacity.

A short is two bytes, 16 bits. In my opinion, this is the least necessary datatype, and I haven't really seen that in actual code, but again, it might be useful for reading binary file formats or doing low level network protocols. For example ip port numbers are 16 bit.

Char represents a single character, which is 16 bits. This is the same size as a short, but a short is signed (-32768 to 32767) while a char is unsigned (0 to 65535). (This means that an ip port number probably is more correctly represented as a char than a short, but this seems to be outside the intended scope for chars...)

For the really authorative source on these details, se the java language specification.

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Coderanch
coderanch.com › t › 328469 › java › comparision-double-long
comparision between double and long (Java in General forum at Coderanch)
Books: Java Threads, 3rd Edition, Jini in a Nutshell, and Java Gems (contributor) ... 123456789.00000001 == 123456789.0" should return true. But I want them as false 123456789.00000001 == 123456789.0000000 should return me false. How do I do that? Rizwan SCJA, SCJP, SCWCD, SCBCD, SCDJWS. ... If you remove string and give numbers as double instead of string it says equal(compare method returns 0) BigDecimal bd1 = new BigDecimal(1234567891.00000001); BigDecimal bd2 = new BigDecimal(1234567891); bd1.compareTo(bd2) returns 0.
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TestMu AI Community
community.testmuai.com › ask a question
How does serialization performance compare between `long` and `double` in Java? - TestMu AI Community
April 1, 2025 - Both long and double take 8 bytes in Java, and while double offers a wider range for storing whole numbers, long might still be sufficient for many use cases. How does java long vs double serialization and deserialization performance compare?
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Sololearn
sololearn.com › en › Discuss › 2059751 › whats-the-difference-between-float-double-and-long-variables
What's the difference between float , double and long variables? | Sololearn: Learn to code for FREE!
Long is similar to int but has ... values but with lower precision. But double on the other hand has 8 bytes of storage and can as well store decimal point values with higher precision....
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Dojo Community
dojo.domo.com › workbench
What the difference between double and long data types — Dojo Community
June 21, 2016 - LONG stores numbers as numeric values, including decimal, fractional, and whole numbers. DOUBLE stores double-precision floating point number values.
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Coderanch
coderanch.com › t › 689430 › java › primitive-long-double-compatibility
primitive long and double compatibility (Beginning Java forum at Coderanch)
If you go back to the JLS link ... permissible values is greater, meaning there are more values between the largest and the smallest. A double and a long each occupy 64 bits, and the long can exactly define every whole number in its range. But the double has a much larger range, ...
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Compsci
compsci.ca › v3 › viewtopic.php
long long vs double?
Computer Science Canada is a community for programmers and students to come and share there knowledge various subjects. We also have many tutorials and tips covering numerous languages and areas of programming.