What does AND 0xFF do?

Question

In the following code:

short = ((byte2 << 8) | (byte1 & 0xFF))

What is the purpose of &0xFF? Because other somes

Answer 1

Assuming your byte1 is a byte(8bits), When you do a bitwise AND of a byte with 0xFF, you are getting the same byte.

So byte1 is the same as byte1 & 0xFF

Say byte1 is 01001101 , then byte1 & 0xFF = 01001101 & 11111111 = 01001101 = byte1

If byte1 is of some other type say integer of 4 bytes, bitwise AND with 0xFF leaves you with least significant byte(8 bits) of the byte1.