Question

I came across below java line and puzzled about its output. Can you please explain me logic behind this code

System.out.println((int)(char)(byte) -1);

Output:

65535

Answer 1

Well, it’s equivalent to:

byte b = -1;
char c = (char) b; // c = '\uFFFF' - overflow from -1
int i = c; // i = 65535

Really the explicit conversion to int in the original is only to make it call System.out.println(int) instead of System.out.println(char).

I believe the byte to char conversion is actually going through an implicit widening conversion first – so it’s like this really:

byte b = -1;
int tmp = b; // tmp = -1
char c = (char) tmp; // c = '\uFFFF'

Does that help at all?