Are there any real life uses for the Java byte primitive type?

Question

For some inexplicable reason the byte primitive type is signed in Java. This mean that valid values are -128..127 instead of the usual 0..255 range representin

Answer 1

On a machine with words larger than 8 bits it's somewhat useful if you wish to store a lot of values that fit in an 8-bit range into a single array, but typically it's not a good idea to use them otherwise since a byte is actually more effort to get out of memory than an int.

Remember though that Java was designed for very small consumer devices (set-top TV boxes). I expect if it had been used this way on small 8-bit microprocessors it would have been more useful as it would fit the word size exactly and could be used for general "Math" operations on a very small scale.

The only reason I can see to make it signed is that an unsigned byte interacting with an int can be a little confusing--but I'm not convinced it's any more confusing than a signed one is!