posted 19 years ago
If the leftmost bit were not the sign bit, how would you tell whether
11111111 11111111 11111111 11111111 was -1 or a large positive number?
Actually, many CPU's have an alternate set of arithmetic instructions that treat the leftmost bit as just another bit. In that system, there are no negative numbers.
The jvm treats char primitives like this.
Mike Gershman
SCJP 1.4, SCWCD in process