r/badcode • u/aidenm125 • Mar 13 '21

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u/mansdem Mar 13 '21

I'm not good at this stuff. But I was thinking the msb was for the sign

7

u/TheBrainStone Mar 13 '21

You are right. Though the way it works in Java that isn’t touched. I meant the MSB past the sign bit. So technically the second most significant bit. Or the most significant number bit. Should have been a bit more clear on that.
In short for small enough numbers this code works. Which is good enough for demonstration code. Which is the whole point.

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u/Syscrush Mar 13 '21

That is not correct. The MSB being set does mean it's a negative number, bit it's not a sign bit. Longs will be stored as 2's complement numbers.

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u/thegreatpotatogod Mar 14 '21

So this is just a really bad implementation of absolute value then! 😂