Printing negative ints, why four bytes

Using Arduino Programming Questions
1

So this code

#include <Arduino.h>

void setup()
{  Serial.begin(9600);
  int i=1 ;
  int j=-1 ;
  Serial.println(i);
  Serial.println(j);
  Serial.println(i,HEX);
  Serial.println(j,HEX);
}
void loop()
{
}

Prints this

1
-1
1
FFFFFFFF

Now if the int is 16 bits, should be four hex digits. So why do I get 8 hex digits ?

If I change "i" to some positive number like 512, I get 200 hex.

2

Because the function Serial.print casts the incoming value to a long, and -1 in long is 0xFFFFFFFF.

3

Because the function Serial.print casts the incoming value to a long, and -1 in long is 0xFFFFFFFF.

yep it is in the Print library code

size_t Print::print(int n, int base)
{
return print((long) n, base);
}

you would get the same effect when you used a char j = -1;