Converting from byte to int in java

Question

I have generated a secure random number, and put its value into a byte. Here is my code.

SecureRandom ranGen = new SecureRandom();
byte[] rno = new byte[4];          


        

Answer 1

if you want to combine the 4 bytes into a single int you need to do

int i= (rno[0]<<24)&0xff000000|
       (rno[1]<<16)&0x00ff0000|
       (rno[2]<< 8)&0x0000ff00|
       (rno[3]<< 0)&0x000000ff;

I use 3 special operators | is the bitwise logical OR & is the logical AND and << is the left shift

in essence I combine the 4 8-bit bytes into a single 32 bit int by shifting the bytes in place and ORing them together

I also ensure any sign promotion won't affect the result with & 0xff