Obviously good approach but wouldn't a regex be more appropriate in this case?

Whether it's moritz's negative check (as the OP requested) or BillKSmith's positive approach, it seems better to avoid interpretation of a huge number that won't be needed anyway.

In reply to Re^2: Regex to check for very large negative numbers by igelkott
in thread Regex to check for very large negative numbers by cspctec

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