0L, 1F, 2D

how would the compiler be able to tell if those are supposed to be
primitive literals or variables?

How would java compilers otherwise know if a string of characters was a
number or a variable?  Even if you insisted that variables have at
least one non-digit, you'd still have problems:

1D

Is that a number or a variable?

Walter Gildersleeve
Freiburg, Germany

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From java.sun.com:

You must explicitly provide a name and a type for each variable you want
to use in your program. The variable's name must be a legal identifier
(in the glossary) — an unlimited-length sequence of Unicode characters
that begins with a letter. You use the variable name to refer to the
data that the variable contains.

That's why.

On 3 Jan 2006 06:36:32 -0800, "Unpredictable"
<Kumar.Ganesha@gmail.com> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone
who said :

1. that's the language rule.

2. the compiler will reject a name beginning with a digit.

3. it would have been ambiguous for strings like  0D and 0x00 and 23L
if you allowed those strings to represent both literals and variable
names.