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This noncompliant code example attempts to convert the byte array representing a BigInteger into a String. Because some of the bytes do not denote valid characters, the resulting String representation loses information. Converting the String back to a BigInteger produces a different value.

BigInteger x = new BigInteger("530500452766");
// convert x to a String
byte[] byteArray = x.toByteArray();
String s = new String(byteArray);
// convert s back to a BigInteger
byteArray = s.getBytes();
x = new BigInteger(byteArray);

When this program was run on a Linux platform where the default character encoding is US-ASCII, the string s got the value {?J??, because some of the characters were unprintable. When converted back to a BigInteger, x got the value 149830058370101340468658109.

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