Best way to convert a signed integer to an unsigned long?

Question

For certain hash functions in Java it would be nice to see the value as an unsigned integer (e.g. for comparison to other implementations) but Java supports only signed type

Answer 1

Just my 2 cents here, but I think it's a good practice to use:

public static long getUnsignedInt(int x) { return x & (~0L); // ~ has precedence over & so no real need for brackets }

instead of:

return x & 0xFFFFFFFFL;

In this situation there's not your concern how many 'F's the mask has. It shall always work!