[dahart]

I didn't downvote, but the article was comparing one's complement to two's complement. One's complement also requires arithmetic modulo 2^n, so nothing you've said is unique to two's complement or helps to explain why it works.

With two's complement, you flip all the bits, and then add 1 to the result. The surprise is that you can shift the negative half of the circle by 1 and everything still works. And not only does it work, but it has advantages over not shifting.

This can indeed be done in any base, but you always have the choice of two complements to use. In decimal you have 9's complement and 10's complement. So, you're right about it working similar in trinary, but the name 2's complement is in fact somewhat specific to binary.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_complements

[vog]

> The surprise is that you can shift the negative half of the circle by 1 and everything still works

But this, again, has has nothing to do with binary but all with modulo arithmetics. If you think in modulo arithmetics, this is still no "surprise".

For example, if you calculate modulo 1000 you don't distinguish between 777 and (777 + 1000x) for any integer x. That is, the following numbers are treated the same:

777, 1777, 2777, ..., 4131321777, ...

but also (777 - 1000 = -223):

-223, -1223, -2223, ...

These all represent the same number (modulo 1000). Modulo arithmetics tells you that for almost all operations it doesn't matter which representative you use (i.e. addition, subtraction, increment, decrement, etc.).

The only difference between signed and unsigend is which representatives you use.

"Unsigned" means: For each class, use the smallest non-negative representative: 0,1,2,...,999

"Signed" means: For each class, use the representative with the smallest absolute value (and use the negative one on tie): -500,-499,...,0,1,...,499

The only binary-specific thing here is how the tie is resolved in the signed case. We prefer -500 over 500 (both are equal modulo 1000), because in binary, that way the first bit always indicates the sign.

But if you are fine with a slightly more complicated sign check, you could als well define the following, where addition, etc. still all work the same way:

"Signed-2": For each class, use the representative with the smallest absolute value (and use the positive one on tie): -499,...,0,1,...,499,500

[dahart]

You're still talking about the modulo circle, and not two's complement relative to 1's complement. Everything you just said having to do with the modulo circle applies to 1's complement. Do you know the difference between 1's complement and 2's complement, and can you explain that difference? Your comments make me suspect you might not understand what 2's complement is. I don't mean that to be insulting, I was only trying to be helpful and explain what my perception of your first comment was, and guess at why people might have downvoted it, since you asked. I realize that suggesting you might be misunderstanding, even if you do understand it, can feel very irritating, and I apologize for that in advance.

Everybody knows about the modulo part, everyone reading this understands that you have a set number of bits, and that positive numbers wrap around to negative ones. That is not what's interesting here, and it is not the key differentiating factor to understanding two's complement, when comparing it to one's complement.

> The only binary-specific thing here is how the tie is resolved in the signed case.

This doesn't feel accurate to me. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by a "tie". But for 1's complement, you have two representations for 0. With 2's complement, you have one representation for 0. The representation for all negative numbers in 2's complement are offset by 1 from the same negative number in 1's complement. Yet both systems allow you to add together two numbers, mixing positive & negative, and get a result that is valid for the system. Why? Why are there two different ways? What happens when I overflow in each system? How does multiplying and dividing work in each system? Those are the interesting questions with complements.