> 0 and -0 being distinct values is honestly just an accident of convenience with how floats are stored That's not at all true. The inclusion of negative zero

> 0 and -0 being distinct values is honestly just an accident of convenience with how floats are stored That's not at all true. The inclusion of negative zero in ieee 754 was a deliberate design choice, and if it were considered desirable that zero should be unsigned, then the bit pattern assigned to -0 would not have been so assigned. See 'much ado about nothing's sign bit'[0], by one of the principal authors of ieee 754. Whereas -0 and +0 are not operationally equivalent, operational equivalence is an important and useful relation; see the very pattern matching example linked from the OP[1]. 0. https://people.freebsd.org/~das/kahan86branch.pdf https://people.freebsd.org/~das/kahan86branch.pdf 1. https://erlangforums.com/t/total-term-order/2477/41 https://erlangforums.com/t/total-term-order/2477/41