June 2006
Intermediate to advanced
1344 pages
42h 52m
English
The discussion so far in this appendix has focused on positive numbers. In this section, we explain how computers represent negative numbers using two’s complement notation. First we explain how the two’s complement of a binary number is formed, then we show why it represents the negative value of the given binary number.
Consider a machine with 32-bit integers. Suppose
Dim value As Integer = 13
The 32-bit representation of value is
00000000 00000000 00000000 00001101
To form the negative of value we first form its one’s complement by combining value with &H7FFFFFFF using Visual Basic’s Xor operator, as in:
onesComplement = value Xor &H7FFFFFFF
Internally, onesComplement is now value ...
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