Multiplying two bytes

Question

Can somebody explain me why I can\'t to multiply two bytes in this way?

byte a = 1;
byte b = 1;
byte c = a*b;

or

byte a = 1         


        

Answer 1

Product of two bytes will not necessarily fit into a byte. So Java needs you to tell it that you know what you are doing and confirm that in case of overflow you will get the low-order bits.