Question

I have this code snippet:

            String negativeBinary = "";
            negativeBinary = Integer.toBinaryString(decimal);
            System.out.println(negativeBinary);

which gives an answer of:11111111111111111111111111111011 when -5 is entered.

Is there anyway to cut off the leading 1’s to limit the answer to say just 10 digits?
Thanks.

Answer 1

Sure, but note that the result returned is the correct 32-bit 2’s-complement representation of -5. If you just chop off the leading part, it won’t be correct.

This will chop off everything but the last 10 characters:

if(negativeBinary.length() > 10)
  negativeBinary.substring(negativeBinary.length() - 10);