java - Ternary operator casts integer

Question

Please have a look into the below code

int a =10;
int b =20;
System.out.println((a>b)?'a':65);//A
System.out.println((a>b)?a:65);//65
System.out.println((a>b)?"a":65);//65

Can somebody explain me why it is displaying "A" if I made variable 'a' as a character? And it should display 65 if I made "a" as a string?

Answer 1

This behavior is documented in the JLS - 15.25. Conditional Operator ? : :

If one of the operands is of type T where T is byte, short, or char, and the other operand is a constant expression (§15.28) of type int whose value is representable in type T, then the type of the conditional expression is T

When you write

(a > b) ? 'a' : 65

the second type is converted to a char.

Go through the JLS, it explains the behavior (same approach) in other cases.