Conversion to Integers

All chars have a matching numeric value. 'a' is 97, 'b' is 98, '&' is 38, and so on.

Same as assigning an int to a double, you can perform a widening conversion by attempting to assign a char to an int.

int valueOfA = 'a';

System.out.println(valueOfA);

chars will be automatically converted to ints when used with mathmatical operators like +, -, >, <, etc.

char gee = 'g';

// all the letters from a to z have consecutive numeric values.
boolean isLetter = gee >= 'a' && gee <= 'z';

System.out.println(isLetter);

This can be useful if you are stranded on Mars¹ or if you want to see if a character is in some range.