Simplify and explain some java code

Hi there I'm trying to understand a piece of code that reads a long value from a byte array at a given position, but I don't know enough about bit shifting, LSB, MSB etc., to fully understand it. It seems to have been overcomplicated a bit, which doesn't help. I need you to try and simplify it, and explain what the code does. I have a byte array containing this data (in hex: 128 bits * 2): 34b7ee402d980200e08f841441702912000005f4697a0108220254001c00fcd6 The function gets called like this: int pos = 0; long ret; ret = [login to view URL](32); [login to view URL]([login to view URL]("%s (%s:%s)", ret, [login to view URL](ret), [login to view URL](ret))); pos += 32; // skip some positions pos += 8; // skip some positions pos += 88; // skip some positions pos += 16; ret = [login to view URL](6); [login to view URL]([login to view URL]("%s (%s:%s)", ret, [login to view URL](ret), [login to view URL](ret))); pos += 6; Output. Please make sure your function can handle reading 6 bits, and not always entire bytes (as it also does now): 1089386292 (1000000111011101011011100110100:40eeb734) 5 (101:5) The function is here: private long getLongFromPos(int length) { int sByte, eByte, cByte, sBit, eBits, mask; long r; r = 0; sByte = pos/8; // get start byte eByte = (pos+length)/8; // get end byte cByte = sByte; sBit = pos % 8; // Find what bit to start on eBits = (pos + length) % 8; // number of bits to read for last byte // process first byte mask = (0xFF << sBit) & 0xFF; if(sByte == eByte) { mask = (0xFF >> 8-eBits) & mask; return (bytes[sByte] & mask) >> sBit; } r = (bytes[sByte] & mask) >> sBit; // build up long from whole bytes int bPos = 1; for(int i = sByte+1; i < eByte; i++) { r = ((long)(bytes[i] & 0xFF) << ((bPos*8)-sBit)) | r; bPos++; } // add last bits if(0 == eBits) // if there is zero bits left to read we are done return r; else mask = (0xFF >> (8-eBits)); r = ((long)(bytes[eByte] & mask) << ((bPos*8)-sBit)) | r; return r; } Thank you :-) Let me know if questions, and sorry if the formatting is bad .. I don't see an option to format it here.