Is Java's BigDecimal the closest data type corresponding to C#'s Decimal?
According to the chart here, the equivalent data type in Java to C#'s Decimal is BigDecimal.
Is this really so? What's up with the "Big" preamble? There doesn't seem to be a "SmallDecimal" or "LittleDecimal" (let alone "MediumSizedDecimal") in Java.
I must say, though, that chart was the clearest thing I found on the subject; the other links here and here and here were about as clear to me as the Mississippi River after a torrential tempest.
Answer
Is this really so?
They are similar but not identical. To be more specific: the Java version can represent every value that the C# version can, but the opposite is not true.
What's up with the "Big" preamble?
A Java BigDecimal can have arbitrarily much precision and therefore can be arbitrarily large. If you want to make a BigDecimal with a thousand places of precision, you go right ahead.
By contrast, a C# decimal has a fixed size; it takes up 128 bits and gives you 28 decimal places of precision.
To be more precise: both types give you numbers of the form
+/- someInteger / 10 ^ someExponent
In C#, someInteger is a 96 bit unsigned integer and someExponent is an integer between 0 and 28.
In Java, someInteger is of arbitrary size and someExponent is a signed 32 bit integer.