Java: Integer.toHexString()

So who out there would expect this code to work?

void write(PrintStream out, int x) throws IOException
{
  out.println(Integer.toHexString(x));
}
int read(BufferedStream in) throws IOException
{
  return Integer.parseInt(in.readLine(), 16);
}


I sure did. Nothing in the docs for toHexString() or parseInt(s, radix) indicates that it parseInt can't handle the output of toHexString(). How can this not be a bug? But sure enough, parseInt() can't read back in the result of toHexString() if the original value was negative (i.e. the high bit was set).

Why can't I just have unsigned int (and unsigned byte)? sigh...