How to specify character literal in groovy?

Question

How do I specify a character literal in groovy since both 'a' and "a" result in string?

I do not want to declare a character variable just for this purpose.

Answer 1

Using the as keyword is the way to make a character literal in Groovy.

'a' as char 

See the discussion here at Groovy's buglist.

Answer 2

If this is for a variable, you can also define the type, so:

import java.awt.image.*  new BufferedImage( 1, 1, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB ).with {     createGraphics().with {          // Declare the type         char aChar = 'a'          // Both ways are equivalent and work         assert fontMetrics.charWidth( aChar ) == fontMetrics.charWidth( 'a' as char )          dispose()     } } 

(apologies for the long example, but I had brain freeze, and couldn't think of a different standard java function that takes a char) ;-)

This also goes against the second line of the question, but I thought I'd add it for completeness