Question

How to change the sign of int using bitwise operators? Obviously we can use x*=-1 or x/=-1. Is there any fastest way of doing this?

I did a small test as below. Just for curiosity…

public class ChangeSign {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int x = 198347;
        int LOOP = 1000000;
        int y;
        long start = System.nanoTime();
        for (int i = 0; i < LOOP; i++) {
            y = (~x) + 1;
        }
        long mid1 = System.nanoTime();
        for (int i = 0; i < LOOP; i++) {
            y = -x;
        }
        long mid2 = System.nanoTime();
        for (int i = 0; i < LOOP; i++) {
            y = x * -1;
        }
        long mid3 = System.nanoTime();
        for (int i = 0; i < LOOP; i++) {
            y = x / -1;
        }
        long end = System.nanoTime();
        System.out.println(mid1 - start);
        System.out.println(mid2 - mid1);
        System.out.println(mid3 - mid2);
        System.out.println(end - mid3);
    }
}

Output is almost similar to :

2200211
835772
1255797
4651923

Answer 1

The speed difference between non-floating point (e.g. int math) addition/multiplication and bitwise operations is less than negligible on almost all machines.

There is no general way to turn an n-bit signed integer into its negative equivalent using only bitwise operations, as the negation operation looks like x = (~x) + 1, which requires one addition. However, assuming the signed integer is 32 bit you can probably write a bitwise equation to do this calculation. Note: do not do this.

The most common, readable way to negate a number is x = -x.