The unary bitwise complement operator (~) inverts a bit pattern; it can be applied to any of the integral types, making every 0 a 1 and every 1 a 0.

For example, an integer contains 32 bits; applying this operator to a value whose bit pattern is 00000000000000000000000000001000 would change its pattern to 11111111111111111111111111110111.

package org.kodejava.basic;

public class UnaryBitwiseComplementOperator {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // An integer type contains 32 bit information.
        // 8 = 00000000000000000000000000001000
        int number = 8;
        System.out.println("number = " + number);
        System.out.println(Integer.toBinaryString(number));

        // Using the ~ operator inverts the number by change the
        // every "0" to "1" and every "1" to "0".
        // 00000000000000000000000000001000
        // 11111111111111111111111111110111
        //
        int invertedNumber = ~number;
        System.out.println("invertedNumber = " + invertedNumber);
        System.out.println(Integer.toBinaryString(invertedNumber));
    }
}

The result of the code snippet:

number = 8
1000
invertedNumber = -9
11111111111111111111111111110111