```val a: Byte = 46 val b: Byte = 2 val real = (b shl 8) + a```

# announcements

[karelpeeters]

val a: Byte = 46
val b: Byte = 2
val real = (b shl 8) + a

[dalexander]

shl doesn't have a version for Bytes

[karelpeeters]

Cast away simple smile

[karelpeeters]

The devs have said they're holding off on these things because the might be real operators for them and there might even be unsigned integer types in the future.

[dalexander]

Yeah, I'm honestly surprised that you can add bytes directly. The reason being they don't like adding primitive operations for something that doesn't have a JVM bytecode mapping (ie. there's no bytecode for byteOne + byteTwo AFAIK, and Java actually does it by implicitly casting).

[dalexander]

But I guess enough people were running into the issue they may have changed it?

[karelpeeters]

Huh I didn't know that, thanks!

[gildor]

Implicit casting is the thing that Kotlin Team tries to avoid as much as possible.

[gildor]

Check this post
https://discuss.kotlinlang.org/t/when-does-bit-fiddling-come-to-kotlin/2249