Java implicit conversion of int to byte

Question

I am about to start working on something the requires reading bytes and creating strings. The bytes being read represent UTF-16 strings. So just to test things out I wante

Answer 1

The key thing to remember here is that int in Java is a signed value. When you assign 0xffffffff (which is 2^32 -1), this is translated into a signed int of value -1 - an int cannot actually represent something as large as 0xffffffff as a positive number.

So for values less than 0x80 and greater than 0xFFFFFF80, the resulting int value is between -128 and 127, which can unambiguously be represented as a byte. Anything outside that range cannot be, and needs forcing with an explicit cast, losing data in the process.