How does the bitwise complement operator (~ tilde) work?

Question

Why is it that ~2 is equal to -3? How does ~ operator work?

Answer 1

here, 2 in binary(8 bit) is 00000010 and its 1's complement is 11111101, subtract 1 from that 1's complement we get 11111101-1 = 11111100, here the sign is - as 8th character (from R to L) is 1 find 1's complement of that no. i.e. 00000011 = 3 and the sign is negative that's why we get -3 here.