Question

I’m trying to convert a short into 2 bytes…and then from those 2 bytes try to get the same short value. For that, I’ve written this code:

        short oldshort = 700;

        byte 333= (byte) (oldshort);
        byte byte2= (byte) ((oldshort >> 8) & 0xff);

        short newshort = (short) ((byte2 << 8) + byte1);

            System.out.println(oldshort);
        System.out.println(newshort);

For the value of 700 (oldshort), newhosrt is 444. After some testing, it looksl ike \tThis code only works for some values. Like…if oldshort=50, then it will work fine..but if it is -200, or bigger values than 127 (i think) it doesn’t work. I guess that there is a problem with the signed bytes, two’s complement value, etc…but I can’t figure out how to solve it.

Any idea?? Any native way to do this in java?? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

When recombining, you need to mask the byte1 to stop it being sign extended.

E.g.

    short oldshort = 700;

    byte byte1= (byte) (oldshort);
    byte byte2= (byte) ((oldshort >> 8) & 0xff);

    short newshort = (short) ((byte2 << 8) + (byte1&0xFF);

        System.out.println(oldshort);
    System.out.println(newshort);

EDIT:
All operations on bytes and shorts in java are actually done as integers. So when you write
+byte1, what is really happening is that the byte is first cast to an integer (sign-extended). It will still have the same value, but now has more bits. We can then mask off the bottom 8 bits to get the original 8-bits from the short – without the sign.

E.g. short =511 = 0x01FE
     // lots of 0x000's because the operations are done on 32-bit int's
     byte1 = (0x000001FE & 0x000000FF) = (0x01FE & 0xFF) = 0xFE = (byte)-2
     byte2 = 0x1

     newShort = (byte2 << 8) + (byte1 & 0xFF)
              = (0x1 << 8) + (0xFE & 0xFF)
            // since the ops are performed as int's
              = (0x00000001 << 8) + (0xFFFFFFFE & 0x000000FF)
            // 0xFFFFFFFE = -2 
              = (0x00000100) + (0x000000FE)
              = 0x000001FE
              = 511