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Why Type Casting of larger variable to smaller variable results in modulo of larger variable by the range of smaller variable

Recently,while I was going through typecasting concept in java, I have seen that type casting of larger variable to smaller variable results in the modulo of larger variable by the range of smaller variable.Can anyone please explain this in detail why this is the case and is it true for any explicit type conversion?.
class conversion {
public static void main(String args[])
{
double a = 295.04;
int b = 300;
byte c = (byte) a;
byte d = (byte) b;
System.out.println(c + " " + d);
}
}
The above code gives the answer of d as 44 since 300 modulo 256 is 44.Please explain why this is the case and also what happens to the value of c?

It is a design decision that goes all the way back the the C programming language and possibly to C's antecedents too.
What happens when you convert from a larger integer type to a smaller integer type is that the top bits are lopped off.
Why? Originally (and currently) because that is what hardware integer instructions support.
The "other" logical way to do this (i.e. NOT the way that Java defines integer narrowing) would be to convert to that largest (or smallest) value representable in the smaller type; e.g.
// equivalent to real thin in real java
// b = (byte) (Math.max(Math.min(i, 127), -128))
would give +127 as the value of b. Incidentally, this is what happens when you convert a floating-point value to an integer value, and the value is too large. That is what is happening in your c example.
You also said:
The above code gives the answer of d as 44 since 300 modulo 256 is 44.
In fact, the correct calculation would be:
int d = ((b + 128) % 256) - 128;
That is because the range of the Java byte type is -128 to +127.
For completeness, the above behavior only happens in Java when the larger type is an integer type. If the larger type is a floating point type and the smaller one is an integer type, then a source value that is too large or too small (or an infinity) gets converted to the largest or smallest possible integer value for the target type; e.g.
double x = 1.0e200;
int i = (int) x; // assigns 'Integer.MAX_VALUE' to 'i'
And a NaN is converted to zero.
Reference:
Java 17 Language Specification: §5.1.3

Multiply an int in Java by itself

Why if I multiply int num = 2,147,483,647 by the same int num is it returning 1 as result? Note that I am in the limit of the int possible value.
I already try to catch the exception but still give the result as 1.

Before any multiplication java translates ints to binary numbers. So you are actually trying to multiply 01111111111111111111111111111111 by 01111111111111111111111111111111. The result of this is something like
1111111111111111111111111111111000000000000000000000000000000001. The int can hold just 32 bits, so in fact you get 00000000000000000000000000000001 which is =1 in decimal.

In integer arithmetic, Java doesn't throw an exception when an overflow occurs. Instead, it just the 32 least significant bits of the outcome, or equivalently, it "wraps around". That is, if you calculate 2147483647 + 1, the outcome is -2147483648.
2,147,483,647 squared happens to be, in binary:
11111111111111111111111111111100000000000000000000000000000001
The least significant 32 bits of the outcome are equal to the value 1.
If you want to calculate with values which don't fit in 32 bits, you have to use either long (if 64 bits are sufficient) or java.math.BigInteger (if not).

int cannot handle just any large value.Look here. In JAVA you have an exclusive class for this problem which comes quite handy
import java.math.BigInteger;
public class BigIntegerDemo {
public static void main(String[] args) {
BigInteger b1 = new BigInteger("987654321987654321000000000"); //change it to your number
BigInteger b2 = new BigInteger("987654321987654321000000000"); //change it to your number
BigInteger product = b1.multiply(b2);
BigInteger division = b1.divide(b2);
System.out.println("product = " + product);
System.out.println("division = " + division);
}
}
Source : Using BigInteger In JAVA

The Java Language Specification exactly rules what should happen in the given case.
If an integer multiplication overflows, then the result is the low-order bits of the mathematical product as represented in some sufficiently large two's-complement format. As a result, if overflow occurs, then the sign of the result may not be the same as the sign of the mathematical product of the two operand values.
It means, that when you multiply two ints, the result will be represented in a long value first (that type holds sufficient bits to represent the result). Then, because you assign it to an int variable, the lower bits are kept for your int.
The JLS also says:
Despite the fact that overflow, underflow, or loss of information may occur, evaluation of a multiplication operator * never throws a run-time exception.
That's why you never get an exception.
My guess: Store the result in a long, and check what happens if you downcast to int. For example:
int num = 2147483647;
long result = num * num;
if (result != (long)((int)result)) {
// overflow happened
}
To really follow the arithmetics, let's follow the calculation:
((2^n)-1) * ((2^n)-1) =
2^(2n) - 2^n - 2^n + 1 =
2^(2n) - 2^(n+1) + 1
In your case, n=31 (your number is 2^31 - 1). The result is 2^62 + 2^32 + 1. In bits it looks like this (split by the 32bit boundary):
01000000000000000000000000000001 00000000000000000000000000000001
From this number, you get the rightmost part, which equals to 1.

It seems that the issue is because the int can not handle such a large value. Based on this link from oracle regarding the primitive types, the maximum range of values allowed is 2^31 -1 (2,147,483,647) which is exactly the same value that you want to multiply.
So, in this case is recommended to use the next primitive type with greater capacity, for example you could change your "int" variables to "long" which have a bigger range between -2^63 to 2^63-1 (-9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807).
For example:
public static void main(String[] args) {
long num = 2147483647L;
long total = num * num;
System.out.println("total: " + total);
}
And the output is:
total: 4611686014132420609
I hope this can help you.
Regards.

According to this link, a Java 'int' signed is 2^31 - 1. Which is equal to 2,147,483,647.
So if you are already at the max for int, and if you multiply it by anything, I would expect an error.

Confusing implementation of java.util.Random nextInt(int n)

I am trying to understand how java.util.Random.nextInt(int n) works and despite all the search and even debugging cannot completely understand the implementation.
It is the while loop that causes confusion:
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/Random.html#nextInt(int)
int bits, val;
do {
bits = next(31);
val = bits % n;
} while (bits - val + (n-1) < 0);
I realize this is supposed to address the modulo bias, but struggling to see how.
Question: how can possibly the expression
bits - val + (n-1)
be negative given that bits value is 31 bit long, i.e. bits is always positive? If bits is positive, val is always less than bits then while condition always stays > 0...

The question has been already addressed in implementation-of-java-util-random-nextint.
Basically, we have to drop some top-most elements for bits in the range [0..2^31[ because they induce a non-uniform distribution
Mathematically we check :
bits - val + (n-1) >= 2^31
and could have wrote it as is if java had unsigned 32 bits integer arithmetics.

You are missing the value of n in your calculation. Either n is negative, bits - val -1 1 < n or otherwise N is big enough to make the integer overflow and become a negative number.

Why do these two similar pieces of code produce different results?

I've been experimenting with Python as a begninner for the past few hours. I wrote a recursive function, that returns recurse(x) as x! in Python and in Java, to compare the two. The two pieces of code are identical, but for some reason, the Python one works, whereas the Java one does not. In Python, I wrote:
x = int(raw_input("Enter: "))
def recurse(num):
if num != 0:
num = num * recurse(num-1)
else:
return 1
return num
print recurse(x)
Where variable num multiplies itself by num-1 until it reaches 0, and outputs the result. In Java, the code is very similar, only longer:
public class Default {
static Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
public static void main(String[] args){
System.out.print("Enter: ");
int x = input.nextInt();
System.out.print(recurse(x));
}
public static int recurse(int num){
if(num != 0){
num = num * recurse(num - 1);
} else {
return 1;
}
return num;
}
}
If I enter 25, the Python Code returns 1.5511x10E25, which is the correct answer, but the Java code returns 2,076,180,480, which is not the correct answer, and I'm not sure why.
Both codes go about the same process:
Check if num is zero
If num is not zero
num = num multiplied by the recursion of num - 1
If num is zero
Return 1, ending that stack of recurse calls, and causing every returned num to begin multiplying
return num
There are no brackets in python; I thought that somehow changed things, so I removed brackets from the Java code, but it didn't change. Changing the boolean (num != 0) to (num > 0 ) didn't change anything either. Adding an if statement to the else provided more context, but the value was still the same.
Printing the values of num at every point gives an idea of how the function goes wrong:
Python:
1
2
6
24
120
720
5040
40320
362880
3628800
39916800
479001600
6227020800
87178291200
1307674368000
20922789888000
355687428096000
6402373705728000
121645100408832000
2432902008176640000
51090942171709440000
1124000727777607680000
25852016738884976640000
620448401733239439360000
15511210043330985984000000
15511210043330985984000000
A steady increase. In the Java:
1
2
6
24
120
720
5040
40320
362880
3628800
39916800
479001600
1932053504
1278945280
2004310016
2004189184
-288522240
-898433024
109641728
-2102132736
-1195114496
-522715136
862453760
-775946240
2076180480
2076180480
Not a steady increase. In fact, num is returning negative numbers, as though the function is returning negative numbers, even though num shouldn't get be getting below zero.
Both Python and Java codes are going about the same procedure, yet they are returning wildly different values. Why is this happening?

Two words - integer overflow
While not an expert in python, I assume it may expand the size of the integer type according to its needs.
In Java, however, the size of an int type is fixed - 32bit, and since int is signed, we actually have only 31 bits to represent positive numbers. Once the number you assign is bigger than the maximum, it overflows the int (which is - there is no place to represent the whole number).
While in the C language the behavior in such case is undefined, in Java it is well defined, and it just takes the least 4 bytes of the result.
For example:
System.out.println(Integer.MAX_VALUE + 1);
// Integer.MAX_VALUE = 0x7fffffff
results in:
-2147483648
// 0x7fffffff + 1 = 0x800000000
Edit
Just to make it clearer, here is another example. The following code:
int a = 0x12345678;
int b = 0x12345678;
System.out.println("a*b as int multiplication (overflown) [DECIMAL]: " + (a*b));
System.out.println("a*b as int multiplication (overflown) [HEX]: 0x" + Integer.toHexString(a*b));
System.out.println("a*b as long multiplication (overflown) [DECIMAL]: " + ((long)a*b));
System.out.println("a*b as long multiplication (overflown) [HEX]: 0x" + Long.toHexString((long)a*b));
outputs:
a*b as int multiplication (overflown) [DECIMAL]: 502585408
a*b as int multiplication (overflown) [HEX]: 0x1df4d840
a*b as long multiplication (overflown) [DECIMAL]: 93281312872650816
a*b as long multiplication (overflown) [HEX]: 0x14b66dc1df4d840
And you can see that the second output is the least 4 bytes of the 4 output

Unlike Java, Python has built-in support for long integers of unlimited precision. In Java, an integer is limited to 32 bit and will overflow.

As other already wrote, you get overflow; the numbers simply won't fit within java's datatype representation. Python has a built-in capability of bignum as to where java has not.
Try some smaller values and you will see you java-code works fine.

Java's int range
int
4 bytes, signed (two's complement). -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647. Like all numeric types ints may be cast into other numeric types (byte, short, long, float, double). When lossy casts are done (e.g. int to byte) the conversion is done modulo the length of the smaller type.
Here the range of int is limited

The problem is very simple ..
coz in java the max limit of integer is 2147483647 u can print it by System.out.println(Integer.MAX_VALUE);
and minimum is System.out.println(Integer.MIN_VALUE);

Because in the java version you store the number as an int which I believe is 32-bit. Consider the biggest (unsigned) number you can store with two bits in binary: 11 which is the number 3 in decimal. The biggest number that can be stored four bits in binary is 1111 which is the number 15 in decimal. A 32-bit (signed) number cannot store anything bigger than 2,147,483,647. When you try to store a number bigger than this it suddenly wraps back around and starts counting up from the negative numbers. This is called overflow.
If you want to try storing bigger numbers, try long.

generate short random number in java?

I want to generate a random number of type short exactly like there is a function for integer type called Random.nextInt(134116). How can I achieve it?

There is no Random.nextShort() method, so you could use
short s = (short) Random.nextInt(Short.MAX_VALUE + 1);
The +1 is because the method returns a number up to the number specified (exclusive). See here
This will generate numbers from 0 to Short.MAX_VALUE inclusive (negative numbers were not requested by the OP)

The most efficient solution which can produce all possible short values is to do either.
short s = (short) random.nextInt(1 << 16); // any short
short s = (short) random.nextInt(1 << 15); // any non-negative short
or even faster
class MyRandom extends Random {
public short nextShort() {
return (short) next(16); // give me just 16 bits.
}
public short nextNonNegativeShort() {
return (short) next(15); // give me just 15 bits.
}
}
short s = myRandom.nextShort();

Java shorts are included in the -32 768 → +32 767 interval.
why wouldn't you perform a
Random.nextInt(65536) - 32768
and cast the result into a short variable ?

How about short s = (short) Random.nextInt();? Note that the resulting distribution might have a bias. The Java Language Specification guarantees that this will not result in an Exception, the int will be truncated to fit in a short.
EDIT
Actually doing a quick test, the resulting distribution seems to be uniformly distributed too.

Simply generate an int like:
short s = (short)Random.nextInt(Short.MAX_VALUE);
The generated int will be in the value space of short, so it can be cast without data loss.