Java™ Puzzlers: Traps, Pitfalls, and Corner Cases

4. Loopy Puzzlers

All the puzzles in this chapter concern loops.

Puzzle 24: A Big Delight in Every Byte

This program loops through the byte values, looking for a certain value. What does the program print?

public class BigDelight {    public static void main(String[ ] args)  {        for (byte b = Byte.MIN_VALUE; b < Byte.MAX_VALUE; b++) {            if (b == 0x90)                System.out.print("Joy!");        }    }}

Solution 24: A Big Delight in Every Byte

The loop iterates over all the byte values except Byte.MAX_VALUE, looking for 0x90. This value fits in a byte and is not equal to Byte.MAX_VALUE, so you might think that the loop would hit it once and print Joy! on that iteration. Looks can be deceiving. If you ran the program, ...