What is the point of Integer.BYTES in Java?

Question

I couldn't find this question being asked so I had to ask it.

Java doc says:

The number of bytes used to represent a int value in two's complement binary form.

Why would we use this in Java? I know what two's complement binary form is, but I cannot wrap my head around its usage.

I found this specifically in Tim Buchalka's course, but he struggled to explain it properly. The code where he used it is:

int locationStart = (int) (indexSize + rao.getFilePointer() + Integer.BYTES);

It's used in RandomAccessFile lesson. I saw other tutors explaining RAF without using Integer.BYTES.

Answer 1

The way you have Integer.MAX_VALUE to represent a number that holds the maximum value an int can have, which is 231-1 or 2147483647, you have Integer.BYTES to represent a number that holds the number of bytes an int uses, which is 4. It's less error-prone and easier to maintain your code using named constants than using the values themselves.

This page presents many such constant values.