How are integers cast to bytes in Java?

Question

I know Java doesn\'t allow unsigned types, so I was wondering how it casts an integer to a byte. Say I have an integer a with a value of 255 and I cast the integer to a byte

Answer 1

Just a thought on what is said: Always mask your integer when converting to bytes with 0xFF (for ints). (Assuming myInt was assigned values from 0 to 255).

e.g.

char myByte = (char)(myInt & 0xFF);

why? if myInt is bigger than 255, just typecasting to byte returns a negative value (2's complement) which you don't want.