Question

I am confused by the following statement that appears here

The basic read() method of the InputStream class reads a single
unsigned byte of data and returns the int value of the unsigned byte.
This is a number between 0 and 255. If the end of stream is
encountered, it returns -1 instead; and you can use this as a flag to
watch for the end of stream.

Since one byte can represent up to 256 integers, I fail to see how it can represent 0 to 256 and -1. Can someone please comment on what I am missing here?

Answer 1

The return type of InputStream#read() is an int, where the value can be read as a byte if it falls in the range of 0-255.