The Binary Representation of Negative Numbers

1. The Binary Representation of Positive and Negative Numbers

1.1 The binary representation of the positive number 5  :

Assuming we have an int type number with a value of 5, we know that its representation in a computer would typically be a 32-bit binary value.

In this case, the binary representation of the number 5 would be:

00000000 00000000 00000000 00000101

Please note that this representation assumes a little-endian byte order, where the least significant bit is stored first.

1.2 The binary representation of the negative number -5:

The binary representation of the negative number -5, in a typical 32-bit signed integer representation, would be:

11111111 11111111 11111111 11111011

This representation follows the two’s complement method, where the most significant bit (leftmost bit) is set to 1 to indicate a negative value. The remaining bits represent the magnitude of the number in binary form. When converted to hexadecimal, it becomes “0xFFFFFFFB“.

Why ?

Negative numbers in computers are typically represented using two’s complement notation.

In two’s complement representation, to express a negative number like -5, you follow these steps:

1. Start with the binary representation of the corresponding positive number (5 in this case), which is “00000000 00000000 00000000 00000101“.
2. Invert all the bits (change 0s to 1s and 1s to 0s): “11111111 11111111 11111111 11111010“.
3. Add 1 to the result obtained in step 2: “11111111 11111111 11111111 11111011“.

So, the correct binary representation of -5 in a 32-bit signed integer format using two’s complement is “11111111 11111111 11111111 11111011“.

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