CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.netbyteboolean-logic
Simon
Simon

Reputation: 25983

Why can't I do boolean logic on bytes?

In C# (3.5) I try the following:

byte byte1 = 0x00;
byte byte2 = 0x00;
byte byte3 = byte1 & byte2;

and I get Error 132: "Cannot implicitly convert type 'int' to 'byte'. An explicit conversion exists (are you missing a cast?)". The same happens with | and ^.

What am I doing wrong? Why is it asking me about ints? Why can't I do boolean logic on bytes?

Upvotes: 6

Views: 3224

Answers (2)

AnthonyWJones
AnthonyWJones

Reputation: 189457

Because byte (and short) types do not implement those operators

See Spec: 4.1.5

Upvotes: 0

Jon Skeet
Jon Skeet

Reputation: 1500585

Various operators aren't declared for byte - both operands get promoted to int, and the result is int. For example, addition:

byte byte1 = 0x00;
byte byte2 = 0x00;
byte byte3 = byte1 + byte2; // Compilation error

Note that compound assignments do work:

byte1 += byte2;

There was a recent SO question on this. I agree this is particularly irksome for bitwise operations though, where the result should always be the same size, and it's a logically entirely valid operation.

As a workaround, you can just cast the result back to byte:

byte byte3 = (byte) (byte1 & byte2);

Upvotes: 12

Related Questions