How to get sign of a number?

Question

Is there a (simple) way to get the "sign" of a number (integer) in PHP comparable to gmp_sign^Docs:

• -1 negative
• 0 zero
• 1 positive

I remember there is some sort of compare function that can do this but I'm not able to find it at the moment.

I quickly compiled this (Demo) which does the job, but maybe there is something more nifty (like a single function call?), I would like to map the result onto an array:

$numbers = array(-100, 0, 100);

foreach($numbers as $number)
{
   echo $number, ': ', $number ? abs($number) / $number : 0, "\n";
}

(this code might run into floating point precision problems probably)

Related: Request #19621 Math needs a "sign()" function

Answer 1

Here's a cool one-liner that will do it for you efficiently and reliably:

function sign($n) {
    return ($n > 0) - ($n < 0);
}

Answer 2

In PHP 7 you should use the combined comparison operator (<=>):

$sign = $i <=> 0;

Answer 3

A variant to the above in my question I tested and which works as well and has not the floating point problem:

min(1, max(-1, $number))

---

Edit: The code above has a flaw for float numbers (question was about integer numbers) in the range greater than -1 and smaller than 1 which can be fixed with the following shorty:

min(1, max(-1, $number == 0 ? 0 : $number * INF))

That one still has a flaw for the float NAN making it return -1 always. That might not be correct. Instead one might want to return 0 as well:

min(1, max(-1, (is_nan($number) or $number == 0) ? 0 : $number * INF))

Answer 4

You can nest ternary operators:

echo $number, ': ',  ($number >= 0 ? ($number == 0 ? 0 : 1) : -1 )

This has no problem with floating point precision and avoids an floating point division.

Answer 5

What's wrong with this form?

if ( $num < 0 )
{
  //negative
}
else if ( $num == 0 )
{
  //zero
}
else
{
  //positive
}

or ternary:

$sign = $num < 0 ? -1 : ( $num > 0 ? 1 : 0 );

Not sure of the performance of abs vs value comparison, but you could use:

$sign = $num ? $num / abs($num) : 0;

and you could turn any of them into a function:

function valueSign($num)
{
  return $sign = $num < 0 ? -1 : ( $num > 0 ? 1 : 0 );
  //or
  return $sign = $num ? $num / abs($num) : 0;
}

---

I suppose you could be talking about gmp_cmp, which you could call as gmp_cmp( $num, 0 );

Answer 6

I think that gmp_sign is not very efficient because it expects a GMP or string. ($n ? abs($n)/$n : 0) is mathematically correct, but the division costs time. The min/max solutions seem to get unnecessary complex for floats.

($n > 0) - ($n < 0) always does 2 tests and one subtraction ($n < 0 ? -1 : ($n > 0 ? 1 : 0) does one or two tests and no arithmetic, it should be most efficient. But I don't believe that the difference will be relevant for most use cases.

Answer 7

I know this is late but what about simply dividing the number by the abs() of itself?

Something like:

function sign($n) {
    return $n/(abs($n));
}

Put whatever error handling you want for div by zero.

Answer 8

Use strcmp^Docs:

echo $number, ': ', strcmp($number, 0), "\n";

Answer 9

Here's one without loop:

function sign($number){
    echo $number, ': ', $number ? abs($number) / $number : 0, "\n";
}

$numbers = array(-100, 0, 100);

array_walk($numbers, 'sign');