title: Signed and unsigned integers -- why are bytes treated differently?
body: <p>I am learning High Level Assembly Language at the moment, and was going over the concept of signed and unsigned integers. It seems simple enough, however getting to sign extension has confused me.</p>
  
  <p>Take the byte 10011010 which I would take to be 154 in decimal. Indeed, using a binary calculator with anything more than word selected shows this as 154 in decimal.</p>
  
  <p>However, if I select the unit to be a byte, and type in 10011010 then suddenly it is treated as -102 in decimal. Whenever I increase it starting from a byte then it is sign extended and will always be -102 in decimal.</p>
  
  <p>If I use anything higher than a byte then it remains 154 in decimal.</p>
  
  <p>Could somebody please explain this seeming disparity?</p>