Safely casting long to int in Java

I think I'd do it as simply as:

public static int safeLongToInt(long l) {
    if (l < Integer.MIN_VALUE || l > Integer.MAX_VALUE) {
        throw new IllegalArgumentException
            (l + " cannot be cast to int without changing its value.");
    }
    return (int) l;
}

I think that expresses the intent more clearly than the repeated casting... but it's somewhat subjective.

Note of potential interest - in C# it would just be:

return checked ((int) l);

A new method has been added with Java 8 to do just that.

import static java.lang.Math.toIntExact;

long foo = 10L;
int bar = toIntExact(foo);

Will throw an ArithmeticException in case of overflow.

See: Math.toIntExact(long)

Several other overflow safe methods have been added to Java 8. They end with exact.

Examples:

• Math.incrementExact(long)
• Math.subtractExact(long, long)
• Math.decrementExact(long)
• Math.negateExact(long),
• Math.subtractExact(int, int)