> Many people think that negative zero is just an engineering artefact. This is not true, it is a feature that was asked for, debated, and then added... Allowi

> Many people think that negative zero is just an engineering artefact. This is not true, it is a feature that was asked for, debated, and then added... Allowing zero to be represented with two bit patterns was a feature that was advocated for to make bit operations easier - it was not decided that both zeroes should be distinguishable. This absolutely is an engineering artifact but you're quite correct that it was quite intentional.