Checking whether a number is positive or negative using bitwise operators

Question

I can check whether a number is odd/even using bitwise operators. Can I check whether a number is positive/zero/negative without using any conditional statements/operators l

Answer 1

Signed integers and floating points normally use the most significant bit for storing the sign so if you know the size you could extract the info from the most significant bit.

There is generally little benefit in doing this this since some sort of comparison will need to be made to use this information and it is just as easy for a processor to tests whether something is negative as it is to test whether it is not zero. If fact on ARM processors, checking the most significant bit will be normally MORE expensive than checking whether it is negative up front.