There are specific suffixes for long (e.g. 39832L), float (e.g. 2.4f) and double (e.g. -7.832d).
If there is no suffix, and it is an integral type (e.g. 5623), it is assumed to be an int. If it is not an integral type (e.g. 3.14159), it is assumed to be a double.
In all other cases (byte, short, char), you need the cast as there is no specific suffix.
The Java spec allows both upper and lower case suffixes, but the upper case version for longs is preferred, as the upper case L is less easy to confuse with a numeral 1 than the lower case l.
See the JLS section 3.10 for the gory details (see the definition of IntegerTypeSuffix).