Why is it that the bitwise NOT operator (~
in most languages) converts the following values like so:
-2 -> 1
-1 -> 0
0 -> -1
1 -> -2
Shouldn't -2
convert to 2
, 1
convert to -1
, etc.?
See two's complement for the representation of negative integers in many languages. As you can see, -2 is represented by 1111110
; if you invert all those bits you get 0000001
, i.e. a value of 1.