Primitive Types are Stored By-value

 

Java primitive types are stored by value, and that's important to understand because it affects the behaviour applications when we assign values from one variable to another. Let's look here. If I declare an initial variable called firstValue and I assign the value 100 to it, what's happening under the covers is that an area of memory is being allocated that's named firstValue and the value 100 is stored inside that memory. So now if I declare another variable, in this case, other value when I assign first value to it, again, I'm looking in an area of storage, I'm giving it a name otherValue, and when I make the assignment, the value 100 is being copied from firstValue into otherValue. And what that means is that there is a distinctly separate copy of that value 100 being moved over into otherValue. What that allows me to do then is that if I make modifications to firstValue, for example, assign the value 50 to it, that 50 replaces what's in firstValue, but it leaves the very well called other value completely untouched, right, and that's what I mean by being stored by value so that each primitive type variable has its own separate copy of the data.