(Java) Specify number of bits (length) when converting binary number to string?

Forget about home-made solutions. Use standard BigInteger instead. You can specify number of bits and then use toString(int radix) method to recover what you need (I assume you need radix=2).

EDIT: I would leave bit control to BigInteger. The object will internally resize its bit buffer to fit the new number dimension. Moreover arithmetic operations can be carried out by means of this object (you do not have to implement binary adders/multipliers etc.). Here is a basic example:

package test;

import java.math.BigInteger;

public class TestBigInteger
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        String value = "1010";
        BigInteger bi = new BigInteger(value,2);
        // Arithmetic operations
        System.out.println("Output: " + bi.toString(2));
        bi = bi.add(bi); // 10 + 10
        System.out.println("Output: " + bi.toString(2));
        bi = bi.multiply(bi); // 20 * 20
        System.out.println("Output: " + bi.toString(2));

        /*
         * Padded to the next event number of bits
         */
        System.out.println("Padded Output: " + pad(bi.toString(2), bi.bitLength() + bi.bitLength() % 2));
    }

    static String pad(String s, int numDigits)
    {
        StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer(s);
        int numZeros = numDigits - s.length();
        while(numZeros-- > 0) { 
            sb.insert(0, "0");
        }
        return sb.toString();
    }
}

This is a common homework problem. There's a cool loop that you can write that will compute the smallest power of 2 >= your target number n.

Since it's a power of 2, the base 2 logarithm is the number of bits. But the Java math library only offers natural logarithm.

math.log( n ) / math.log(2.0) 

is the number of bits.

Even simpler:

String binAddr = Integer.toBinaryString(Integer.parseInt(hexAddr, 16));  
String.format("%032", new BigInteger(binAddr)); 

The idea here is to parse the string back in as a decimal number temporarily (one that just so happens to consist of all 1's and 0's) and then use String.format().

Note that you basically have to use BigInteger, because binary strings quickly overflow Integer and Long resulting in NumberFormatExceptions if you try to use Integer.fromString() or Long.fromString().

Try this:

String binaryString = String.format("%"+Integer.toString(size)+"s",Integer.toBinaryString(19)).replace(" ","0");

where size can be any number the user wants

Here's a simple solution for int values; it should be obvious how to extend it to e.g. byte, etc.

public static String bitString(int i, int len) {
    len = Math.min(32, Math.max(len, 1));
    char[] cs = new char[len];
    for (int j = len - 1, b = 1; 0 <= j; --j, b <<= 1) {
        cs[j] = ((i & b) == 0) ? '0' : '1';
    }
    return new String(cs);
}

Here is the output from a set of sample test cases:

  0   1                                0                                0
  0  -1                                0                                0
  0  40 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000
 13   1                                1                                1
 13   2                               01                               01
 13   3                              101                              101
 13   4                             1101                             1101
 13   5                            01101                            01101
-13   1                                1                                1
-13   2                               11                               11
-13   3                              011                              011
-13   4                             0011                             0011
-13   5                            10011                            10011
-13  -1                                1                                1
-13  40 11111111111111111111111111110011 11111111111111111111111111110011

Of course, you're on your own to make the length parameter adequate to represent the entire value.

import java.util.BitSet;

public class StringifyByte {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        byte myByte = (byte) 0x00;
        int length = 2;
        System.out.println("myByte: 0x" + String.valueOf(myByte));
        System.out.println("bitString: " + stringifyByte(myByte, length));

        myByte = (byte) 0x0a;
        length = 6;
        System.out.println("myByte: 0x" + String.valueOf(myByte));
        System.out.println("bitString: " + stringifyByte(myByte, length));
    }

    public static String stringifyByte(byte b, int len) {
        StringBuffer bitStr = new StringBuffer(len);
        BitSet bits = new BitSet(len);
        for (int i = 0; i < len; i++)
        {
           bits.set (i, (b & 1) == 1);
           if (bits.get(i)) bitStr.append("1"); else bitStr.append("0");
           b >>= 1;
        }
        return reverseIt(bitStr.toString());
    }

    public static String reverseIt(String source) {
        int i, len = source.length();
        StringBuffer dest = new StringBuffer(len);

        for (i = (len - 1); i >= 0; i--)
           dest.append(source.charAt(i));
        return dest.toString();
    }
}

Output:

myByte: 0x0
bitString: 00
myByte: 0x10
bitString: 001010

So here instead of 8 you can write your desired length and it will append zeros accordingly. If the length of your mentioned integer exceeds that of the number mentioned then it will not append any zeros

String.format("%08d",1111);

Output:00001111

String.format("%02d",1111);

output:1111