Print a short in binary format in Java

Steve Cohen picture Steve Cohen · Nov 20, 2013 · Viewed 9.1k times · Source

Is there any builtin support for outputting a binary representation of a short in java?

There is of course, this, which recommends the use of Integer.toBinaryString(), which works. There is no comparable Short.toBinaryString(). Is anything else available?

Update: Integer.toBinaryString() doesn't quite work the way Short.toBinaryString() would work if it existed.

public static void main(String[] args) {
    System.out.println(Integer.toBinaryString(Short.MIN_VALUE));
}

produces

11111111111111111000000000000000

whereas I would like to see

1000000000000000

Of course, it's easy enough to chop off the first 16 digits, but that's kind of my point. This method ought to exist.

Answer

Óscar López picture Óscar López · Nov 20, 2013

All shorts can be safely cast to integers, so the linked answer will work fine as long as you correctly convert the short value to int before making the conversion (and in doing so, we're making sure that the digits at the beginning are zeroed):

short x = 10;
System.out.println(Integer.toBinaryString(0xFFFF & x));
=> 1010

System.out.println(Integer.toBinaryString(0xFFFF & Short.MIN_VALUE));
=> 1000000000000000

To put it another way: all shorts are integers, so there's no need to define a separate method for obtaining the binary representation of a short.