Thread: Socket connections and Unsigned values

Out of curiosity, I was wondering how you guys handled unsigned values when using sockets.

The way I imagine handling unsigned values is using bitwise/shift operators (since these "disregard" sign), but that can be quite cumbersome when it comes to things like multiplication/division/modulo operators (add/subtract are very easy to do, not sure on their performance compared to regular add/subtract).

The other alternative I considered was using the "next size up" method, where you use a data type that's larger than the one you actually want. This means, though, that I'd have to check the bounds every time when using these.

hmm, I guess I could have been more specific.

What I wanted to do was create at UDP socket connection to another application and sending/receiving packets of data to the other application. The other application isn't written in Java, so there is data that needs to be unsigned (unfortunately, this other application can't be changed). I know that there's no problem just sending a signed int "masquerading" as an unsigned int, but the issue comes when doing arithmetic in the Java program.

I was just wondering whats the best solution to remedy this (either writing some methods to perform the unsigned arithmetic, or using the next size up).