Fastest way to get sign in Java?

Question

I\'d like to get the sign of a float value as an int value of -1 or 1.

Avoiding conditionals is always a good idea in reducing computationa

Answer 1

You should only try to use hard to read/understand optimizations, if it is absolutely neccessary.

The issue with

int sign = Math.signum(a);

may be that it returns 0 if 0.0==a

But you should rely on existing library functions whenever possible to keep your code easy to read/understand.

If you want 1 for 0.0==a what about this:

int sign = (0>a)?-1:1;