Re: Compare two signed integers without using comparision operator in perl

$a = 3;
$b = 4;

print (sqrt(($a-$b)**2) - ($a-$b));
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Reasoning:
A-B is positive or negative (assume disequal)

negative numbers, squared, and then rooted, disequal themselves

Comment on Re: Compare two signed integers without using comparision operator in perl Download Code

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Re: Re: Compare two signed integers without using comparision operator in perl by bart (Canon) on May 06, 2003 at 19:18 UTC
What's wrong with abs? `print abs($a-$b) - ($a-$b);` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: Re: Compare two signed integers without using comparision operator in perl by Util (Priest) on May 07, 2003 at 00:10 UTC
`abs($a-$b) - ($a-$b)` equals 0 when `$a>=$b`, and equals `2*abs($a-$b)` when `$a<$b`. Perhaps you meant to say `abs($a-$b)/($a-$b)`. This would produce the same (-1,0,1) that `<=>` returns, but it needs special handling to avoid division by zero, e.g. the `eval` in tye's post.	[reply] [d/l] [select]