Thread: Two things about my program that I don't quite understand (but it works good)

I've been working with a program that inputs an integer and prints it's binary representation. The program works fine, but there are two things I don't get.

The final loop at the bottom of convert function prints the array in reverse order but I don't understand why it needs to be written that way. The integer j is assigned whatever variable i is minus one to start that loop.

Also I want to always print out eight bit places. If I enter the integer 58 I want it to output 00111010. But my program just outputs 111010. So how can I get it to always output all eight bit places?

Code:

void convertToBinary(int n)
{
	int binaryNumber[8];
	int i = 0;

	while(n > 0)
	{
		binaryNumber[i] = n % 2; // store the 1's and 0's in array
		n /= 2;
		i++;
	}

	cout << "The binary equivalent is ";
        
        
        // print the binary digits in reverse order
	for(int j = i - 1; j >= 0; j--) // why is this written like this
		cout << binaryNumber[j] << " ";

}

Okay I figured out why we set j to whatever i is minus one. Because after the final division takes place the value of i gets incremented one more time and we don't want to over run the array bounds. Good! But I don't know how to get it to print all eight bit places.