Negative zero in JavaScript

Negative zero in JavaScript

Written by Rahul on Apr 1st, 2021 ・ Views ・ Report Post

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Seriously? This topic! Yes. JavaScript actually has two different representations for ZERO:

  • Positive zero, represented by +0 / 0
  • Negative zero, represented by -0

This is because JavaScript implements the IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic (IEEE 754),
which has signed zeroes.

And on a note, both zeroes are equal to one another.

+0 === -0 // true  
+0 == -0 // true

The only difference between both is in dealing with Infinity

1 / +0 // Infinity  
1 / -0 // -Infinity
-1 / +0 // -Infinity
-1 / -0 // Infinity

Numbers always need to be encoded to be stored digitally. But why do some encodings have two Zeros?

Let us look at encoding an integer as a 4-digit binary number by the sign-and-magnitude method.

Here,

  • One bit denotes the sign. (0 if positive, 1 if negative)
  • Remaining bits for the magnitude. (absolute value)

Therefore, -2 and +2 are encoded as,

1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | => -2

0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | => 2

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Which means, we will also have two zeroes!

1000 // -0   
000 // +0

Hunt 🤔

We saw that -0 and 0 are equal.
Imagine, you came across a use case to return false while comparing -0 and 0.

How would you do that??? (Comment below)

😎Thanks for Reading | Happy Coding⚡

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