How to check if a number is negative?

Question

I want to check if a number is negative. I’m searching for the easiest way, so a predefined JavaScript function would be the best, but I didn’t find anything yet. Here is what I have so far, but I don’t think that this is a good way:

function negative(number) {   if (number.match(/^-\d+$/)) {     return true;   } else {     return false;   } } 

Answer 1

Instead of writing a function to do this check, you should just be able to use this expression:

(number < 0) 

Javascript will evaluate this expression by first trying to convert the left hand side to a number value before checking if it's less than zero, which seems to be what you wanted.

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Specifications and details

The behavior for x < y is specified in §11.8.1 The Less-than Operator (<), which uses §11.8.5 The Abstract Relational Comparison Algorithm.

The situation is a lot different if both x and y are strings, but since the right hand side is already a number in (number < 0), the comparison will attempt to convert the left hand side to a number to be compared numerically. If the left hand side can not be converted to a number, the result is false.

Do note that this may give different results when compared to your regex-based approach, but depending on what is it that you're trying to do, it may end up doing the right thing anyway.

• "-0" < 0 is false, which is consistent with the fact that -0 < 0 is also false (see: signed zero).
• "-Infinity" < 0 is true (infinity is acknowledged)
• "-1e0" < 0 is true (scientific notation literals are accepted)
• "-0x1" < 0 is true (hexadecimal literals are accepted)
• " -1 " < 0 is true (some forms of whitespaces are allowed)

For each of the above example, the regex method would evaluate to the contrary (true instead of false and vice versa).

References

• ECMAScript 5 (PDF)
• ECMAScript 3, §11.8.1 The Less-than Operator (<)
• ECMAScript 3, §11.8.5 The Abstract Relational Comparison Algorithm

See also

• regular-expressions.info/Matching Floating Point Numbers with a Regular Expression

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Appendix 1: Conditional operator ?:

It should also be said that statements of this form:

if (someCondition) {    return valueForTrue; } else {    return valueForFalse; } 

can be refactored to use the ternary/conditional ?: operator (§11.12) to simply:

return (someCondition) ? valueForTrue : valueForFalse; 

Idiomatic usage of ?: can make the code more concise and readable.

Related questions

• javascript if alternative
• To Ternary or Not To Ternary?

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Appendix 2: Type conversion functions

Javascript has functions that you can call to perform various type conversions.

Something like the following:

if (someVariable) {    return true; } else {    return false; } 

Can be refactored using the ?: operator to:

return (someVariable ? true : false); 

But you can also further simplify this to:

return Boolean(someVariable); 

This calls Boolean as a function (§15.16.1) to perform the desired type conversion. You can similarly call Number as a function (§15.17.1) to perform a conversion to number.

Related questions

• How can I convert a string to boolean in JavaScript?
• what is the purpose of javascript new Boolean() ?

Answer 2

function negative(n) {   return n < 0; } 

Your regex should work fine for string numbers, but this is probably faster. (edited from comment in similar answer above, conversion with +n is not needed.)