What is the best way to work around the fact that ALL Java bytes are signed?

Question

In Java, there is no such thing as an unsigned byte.

Working with some low level code, occasionally you need to work with bytes that have unsigned values greater tha

Answer 1

When reading any single value from the array copy it into something like a short or an int and manually convert the negative number into the positive value it should be.

byte[] foobar = ..;
int value = foobar[10];
if (value < 0) value += 256 // Patch up the 'falsely' negative value

You can do a similar conversion when writing into the array.