Zero as a constant?

Question

I have come across this programming idiom recently:

const float Zero = 0.0;

which is then used in comparisons:

if (x > Zero) {..}

Can anyone explain if this is really any more efficient or readable or maintainable than:

if (x > 0.0) {..}

NOTE: I can think of other reasons to define this constant, Im just wondering about its use in this context.

Answer 1

Possible reasons are caching, naming or forcing type

Caching (not applicable)

You want to avoid the cost of creating an object during the act of comparison. In Java an example would be

BigDecimal zero = new BigDecimal ("0.0");

this involves a fairly heavy creation process and is better served using the provided static method:

BigDecimal zero = BigDecimal.ZERO;

This allows comparisons without incurring a repeated cost of creation since the BigDecimal is pre-cached by the JVM during initialisation.

In the case of what you have described, a primitive is performing the same job. This is largely redundant in terms of caching and performance.

Naming (unlikely)

The original developer is attempting to provide a uniform naming convention for common values throughout the system. This has some merit, especially with uncommon values but something as basic as zero is only worth it in the case of the caching case earlier.

Forcing type (most likely)

The original developer is attempting to force a particular primitive type to ensure that comparisons are cast to their correct type and possibly to a particular scale (number of decimal places). This is OK, but the simple name "zero" is probably insufficient detail for this use case with ZERO_1DP being a more appropriate expression of the intent.

Answer 2

This might make sense since it explicitly defines Zero to be of type float.

At least in C and C++ the value 0.0 is of type double, while the equivalent float is 0.0f. So assuming the x you compare against is also always a float saying

x > 0.0

while actually promote x to double to match the type of 0.0 which might lead to issues (with equality tests especially). The comparison without conversion would of course be

x > 0.0f

which does the same as

float Zero = 0.0; // double 0.0 converted to float  
x > Zero

Nevertheless, I think it would be much more useful to enable warnings of conversions in the compiler instead of having users write awkward code.

Answer 3

It's Because of "Tooling Nagging"

A possible reason I don't see listed here is because a lot of quality tools flag the use of magic numbers. It's often a bad practice to have magic numbers thrown into an algorithm without making them clearly visible for change later, especially if they are duplicated in multiple places in the code.

So, while these tools are right about flagging such issues, they often generate false positives for situations where these values are harmless and most likely to be static, or to just be initialization values.

And when that happens, sometimes you face the choice of:

• marking them as false positives, if the tool allows it (usually with a specially formatted comment, which is annoying for people NOT using the tool)
• or extracting these values to constants, whether it matters or not.

About Performance

It depends on the language I guess, but this is fairly common in Java and has no performance impact, as values are inlined at compile time if they are real constants static final. It wouldn't have an impact in C or C++ if they are declared as constants or even as pre-processor macros either.

Answer 4

First of all, here zero is defined as float, not int. Of course, this doesn't affect anything in the comparison, but in other cases when this constant is used, it might make difference.

I see no other reason why Zero is declared a constant here. It's just some coding style, and it's better to follow the style if it is used everywhere else in that certain program.

Answer 5

It's almost certainly exactly as efficient during execution (unless your compiler is very primitive) and very slightly less efficient during compilation.

As to whether that's more readable than x > 0... remember that there are people who honestly, genuinely, think that COBOL was a great idea and a pleasure to work with - and then there are people who think exactly the same about C. (Rumor has it that there even exist some programmers with the same opinion about C++!) In other words, you are not going to get general agreement on this point, and it's probably not worth fighting over.

Answer 6

[is] this is really any more efficient or readable or maintainable than:

if (x > 0.0) {..}

If you were writing generic (i.e. non-type-specific) code, then very possibly. A zero() function could apply to any algebraic type, or any type that is a group w.r.t. addition. It could be an integer, it could be a floating-point value, it could even be a function if your variable is, say, itself a function within some linear space (e.g. x is a linear function of the form z -> a_x * z + b_x) and then zero() provides the function with a and b both being zero() of the underlying type.

So you would expect such code in, say, C++ possibly (although a zero() is not very common AFAIK), or in Julia, and maybe other languages.

Answer 7

Possible reason: Documentation
Using a named variable shows clear intent and explicitly states that this is indeed what was meant by the one implementing it. E.g.

bool IsFalling => Speed.y < 0f;
// vs
bool IsFalling => Speed.y < Zero;

The latter should prevent anyone reading the code (possibly even the one who wrote it) from even having to start to wonder whether the number is correct or if maybe it was mistyped and should instead be 10f or something.

If this value is used in multiple different classes it might be worth extracting it to a new static class which would then also help avoid ambiguity between different types, e.g. Float.Zero, Double.Zero, Int.Zero, etc.