And I was under the impression there are a lot of software engineers here?

It's been 10 minutes since your post. Why do you think that people are so interested in your life or that what you have to say is compelling enough for them to post within minutes?

That's not what I meant. Just how long it takes you to figure it out when you start thinking about it.

Smartass :P

You can't do it in 8 digits unless you're just writing the negative sign in front of the number, technically it should just be something like 100000010 with the leading 1 signaling the next number is negative, giving you -256+0+0+0+0+0+2+0 = -254. I suppose writing -00000010 works too. I'm running under the assumption that your -254 is in decimal format. If it's actually hex or base 6 or 8 then you have way more work.

MFT is a master file table, which basically holds the position of the data on a drive.

I don't have a clue what you're asking in your third question. Next time do your own homework/test.

That's what I thought: you can't do it in 8 digits. Just had to hear it from someone else to be sure because that question bugged me for quite a while...

I didn't have a clue about the 2nd one, and no problem with the 3rd one.

And I did my own test. It went pretty well but I just couldn't figure out these 3 questions in a 100-minute test...

Sorry if you think I bring the interesting-thread-level down, but I don't think so.

And I now realise I misinterpreted zultar's post; he was referring to me saying:

"And I was under the impression there are a lot of software engineers here?"

And I didn't mean I expected an answer by then, but it was merely something I forgot to mention in my OP. I understand the confusion :)

There's no confusion. I'm just a +1 whore as has been said elsewhere. :)

I know. I thought I would answer seriously so you wouldn't continue whoring my thread but I bet that someone will +1 that last post for some reason too...

You gotta 2's Complement that bitch, n00b

abgemacht: I know but then you end up with 00000010, which is, as I bet you know, 2, not -254.

I tried some other things but then I realised that there can be only 2^8=256 options, and because there's positive and negative you can't really get further than 256/2=128 negative options... One of those being 0 I think...

So that's why I thought there is no solution. Feel free to prove me wrong though.

No, what you end up with is -254 in 2s compliment form. That's the only way to do it.

But you need 9 digits to write this down as a number, right?

This is about 8 digits, the first digit showing if it's positive or negative...

Hmm, I wonder what answer I was supposed to give now...

So just to be clear: you think I should have answered 00000010 when I have to write down -254 in 8 digits?

I mean, I see how you can argue 00000010 could be -254 as well as 2 as well as 258, but is that, like, the official way to see it? Isn't 00000010 only 2?

Yes. And maybe put 2s compliment in parentheses

Interesting... Now I want to know if the teacher considers my answer correct...

If you think about it, from the computer's point of view, it doesn't matter if it's 2 or -254 because the math is the same either way. All that matters is how you interpret it at the end.

I understand that, but I'm still not sure if, because of that reason, you can simply say -254=00000010

I may just be in denial though :P

Yes, you can. Go read the Wikipedia page if you don't trust me.

Well I looked actually but in Dutch it doesn't mention this and in English I'm not sure...

So would you say that, if the question was to write it in 2 binary bits (signed), the answer is 10?

Write what in 2 bits?

-254.

254 = 2^7 (128) + 2^6 (64) + 2^5 (32) + 2^4 (16) + 2^3 (8) + 2^2 (4) + 2^1 (2) + 0*2^0
which is 11111110.
-254 = -11111110.
or you could us the twos compliment, but signed you also have to decicde whether to use the first or last bit as the sign.

Still i think the order and the +/- symbol are standard notations for written numbers as opposed to how computers interpret...

You can't write -254 with only two bits. You need at least 8

You can write -254 even with only one bit. Just define that having a bit in state 1 means -254.

You sure you didn't mean bytes not bits steephie?

abgemacht: I mean, if you can use 00000010 to represent -254, why can't you use 10 to represent -254? I don't see the difference in all honesty.

Do you mean that 00000010 represents only 2 decimal numbers: 2 and -254? So not 258 for instance?

Because if that last one counts you can basically say (any multiplier of 256)+2 is an answer. If that indeed counts, 10 could be counted as any even number...

Do you know what I mean? Do you think all those are indeed good answers or just -254 and 2?

Yes I'm sure jmo.

10 is not the same as 00000010.
the later is [0000 0010] which can be interpreted as %256 (using modulo arithmetic)
whereas, [10] can be seen as %4.

modulo arithmetic is pretty common, especially when it comes to computers (and is probably the reason for overflow errors... )