Convert an UNSIGNED byte to a JAVA integer

Convert an UNSIGNED byte to a JAVA type

In JAVA, a byte always considered as signed when converted to another type. We must mask the sign bit to JAVA, cast to an integer and process the masked bit if needed. The following method implements this idea :

public class UnsignedByte {
  public static void main (String args[]) {
    byte b1 = 127;
    byte b2 = -128;
    byte b3 = -1;

    System.out.println(b1);
    System.out.println(b2);
    System.out.println(b3);
    System.out.println(unsignedByteToInt(b1));
    System.out.println(unsignedByteToInt(b2));
    System.out.println(unsignedByteToInt(b3));
    /*
    127
    -128
    -1
    127
    128
    255
    */
    }

  public static int unsignedByteToInt(byte b) {
    return (int) b & 0xFF;
    }
}

Therefore for an array of 4 bytes (buf[]), which represents an integer :

int i = 0;
int pos = 0;
i += unsignedByteToInt(buf[pos++]) << 24;
i += unsignedByteToInt(buf[pos++]) << 16;
i += unsignedByteToInt(buf[pos++]) << 8;
I += unsignedByteToInt(buf[pos++]) << 0;

To convert a byte to it's hexadecimal equivalent

public static String byteToHex(byte b){
  int i = b & 0xFF;
  return Integer.toHexString(i);
}

NOTE: when converting byte representing an integer, it's possible that you will have to deal with the big-endian vs little-endian format. See this How-to