Data types

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All types in Java (and as such Minecraft) are big-endian, that is, the most significant byte comes first. The majority of everyday computers are little endian, and using most programming languages will require converting big endian values to little endian.

These data formats are identical to those provided by the Java classes DataInputStream and DataOutputStream.

Size Range Notes
byte 1 -128 to 127 Signed, two's complement
short 2 -32768 to 32767 Signed, two's complement
int 4 -2147483648 to 2147483647 Signed, two's complement
long 8 -9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807 Signed, two's complement
float 4

See this

Single-precision 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point
double 8

See this

Double-precision 64-bit IEEE 754 floating point
string ≥ 2
≤ 240
N/A UCS-2 string, big-endian. Prefixed by a short containing the length of the string in characters. UCS-2 consists of 16-bit words, each of which represent a Unicode code point between U+0000 and U+FFFF inclusive.
bool 1 0 or 1 Value can be either True (0x01) or False (0x00)
metadata Varies See this

Some data may be stored as an "absolute integer", which is a more precise kind of integer, and a less precise kind of double. The conversion from double to absolute integer is like so:

abs_int = (int)double * 32;

And back again:

double = (double)abs_int / 32;