protowise

It's no problem, don't mind clarifying. You are talking about adding a bit to a specific number (111 in your example). If you add a 1 bit to a number like you did, you effectively double the number + 1 as you correctly noted. By contrast if you add a 0 bit to a number you simply double the nu...

Nothing in some arbitrary binary value will tell you how to interpret the value. You must know how the value is to be interpreted (2's complement, unsigned, sign and magnitude, etc). If I have 16 arbitrary bits, they may represent ASCII text, UNICODE, a 2's complement signed integer, unsigned ...