Difference between 1’s Complement representation and 2’s Complement representation Technique

Prerequisite – Representation of Negative Binary Numbers 

1’s complement of a binary number is another binary number obtained by toggling all bits in it, i.e., transforming the 0 bit to 1 and the 1 bit to 0. Examples:

Let numbers be stored using 4 bits

1's complement of 7 (0111) is 8 (1000)
1's complement of 12 (1100) is 3 (0011)

2’s complement of a binary number is 1 added to the 1’s complement of the binary number. Examples:

Let numbers be stored using 4 bits

2's complement of 7 (0111) is 9 (1001)
2's complement of 12 (1100) is 4 (0100)

  These representations are used for signed numbers.

The main difference between 1′ s complement and 2′ s complement is that 1′ s complement has two representations of 0 (zero) — 00000000, which is positive zero (+0), and 11111111, which is negative zero (-0); whereas in 2′ s complement, there is only one representation for zero — 00000000 (0) because if we add 1 to 11111111 (-1), we get 100000000, which is nine bits long. Since only eight bits are allowed, the left-most bit is discarded(or overflowed), leaving 00000000 (-0) which is the same as positive zero. This is the reason why 2′ s complement is generally used.

Another difference is that while adding numbers using 1′ s complement, we first do binary addition, then add in an end-around carry value. But, 2′ s complement has only one value for zero and doesn’t require carry values.

Range of 1’s complement for n bit number is from -2^n-1-1 to 2^n-1-1 whereas the range of 2’s complement for n bit is from -2^n-1 to 2^n-1-1.

There are 2^n-1 valid numbers in 1’s complement and 2ⁿ valid numbers in 2’s complement.

Difference between 1’s Complement representation and 2’s Complement representation in tabular form:

GeeksforGeeks

Improve