hex - Setting ints to negative values using hexadecimal literals in C#

Question

Is there any way to set an int to a negative value using a hexadecimal literal in C#? I checked the specification on Integer literals but it didn't mention anything.

For example:

int a = -1;         // Allowed
int b = 0xFFFFFFFF; // Not allowed?

Hexadecimal notation is clearer for my application, and I'd prefer not to use uints because I would need to do some extra casting.

Answer 1

Use the unchecked keyword.

unchecked
{
   int b = (int)0xFFFFFFFF;    
}

or even shorter

int b = unchecked((int)0xFFFFFFFF);