Question

Is it possible to parse a negative number into an unsigned value with Java’s BigInteger?

So for instance, I’d to interpret -1 as FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.

Answer 1

If you are thinking of a two’s complement, you must specify a working bit length. A Java long has 64 bits, but a BigInteger is not bounded.

You could do something as this:

// Two's complement reference: 2^n . 
// In this case, 2^64 (so as to emulate a unsigned long)
private static final BigInteger TWO_COMPL_REF = BigInteger.ONE.shiftLeft(64);

public static BigInteger parseBigIntegerPositive(String num) {
    BigInteger b = new BigInteger(num);
    if (b.compareTo(BigInteger.ZERO) < 0)
        b = b.add(TWO_COMPL_REF);
    return b;
}

public static void main(String[] args) {
    System.out.println(parseBigIntegerPositive("-1").toString(16));
}

But this would implicitly mean that you are working with BigIntegers in the 0 – 2^64-1 range.

Or, more general:

public static BigInteger parseBigIntegerPositive(String num,int bitlen) {
    BigInteger b = new BigInteger(num);
    if (b.compareTo(BigInteger.ZERO) < 0)
        b = b.add(BigInteger.ONE.shiftLeft(bitlen));
    return b;
}

To make it more fooproof, you could add some checks, eg

public static BigInteger parseBigIntegerPositive(String num, int bitlen) {
    if (bitlen < 1)
        throw new RuntimeException("Bad bit length:" + bitlen);
    BigInteger bref = BigInteger.ONE.shiftLeft(bitlen);
    BigInteger b = new BigInteger(num);
    if (b.compareTo(BigInteger.ZERO) < 0)
        b = b.add(bref);
    if (b.compareTo(bref) >= 0 || b.compareTo(BigInteger.ZERO) < 0 )
        throw new RuntimeException("Out of range: " + num);
    return b;
}