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The smallest positive integer is either 0 or 1 depending on whether 0 is considered positive or not.
The largest negative integer is -1.
So the answer is 1 or 2.
This is not the intent of question but that is the correct answer given how the question was worded.
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Halfway through my first cup of coffee, this sent me into overthink mode, coming up with everything from infinity to zero. It took some reading of comments to see the correct answer is indeed 2.
Great question Griff.
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You have to define 'largest'.
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I don't - we have dictionaries to do that: 
Quote: largest
Definitions
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
(adjective) Greatest in size of those under consideration.
(adjective) maximal.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
(adjective) Superlative form of large: most large.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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That is no help whatsoever for your mathematical usage here.
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Since this is a coding site here are the possibilities for a 32-bit int.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <limits.h>
int main()
{
int pos = 1;
int neg = INT_MIN;
printf("pos=%d neg=%d\n", pos,neg);
printf("pos+neg=%d\n", pos+neg);
printf("pos-neg=%d\n", pos-neg);
printf("neg+pos=%d\n", neg+pos);
printf("neg-pos=%d\n", neg-pos);
return 0;
}
pos=1 neg=-2147483648
pos+neg=-2147483647
pos-neg=-2147483647
neg+pos=-2147483647
neg-pos=2147483647
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The algebraic symbol > is usually pronounced (in English) "greater than", rather than "larger than", and I think some of the ambiguity of the question and its interpretation lies in the specific words used. If the question had specified "greatest negative number" rather than "largest negative number", it might have elicited different answers. -1 > -∞, but is -1 "larger" than -∞ ? How many bits does it take to encode each "value"? Rich Leyshon's proposition of speeding a car in reverse to avoid a ticket, and the likely outcome, seems apt.
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Kinda depends on who's asking.. a C programmer, or Python, or Javascript or a maths professor.
(idk the answers but can we craft this into the form of a "these three guys walk into a bar" joke?)
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Greetings Kind Regards
I seek your kind assistance to recall the name of the product or name of the firm / web site or name of proprietor who many years ago prior to the common use of SSDs sold a highly successful Windows tool for purpose as best as I recall hard disk defragmentation. I had purchased a copy for W95. He was and I hope still is a 10x programmer if ever there was one. He wrote Windows GUI code in assembler and offered gratis several other tools some related to networks. The product had a catchy obvious name but I do not recall now and a web search for PC hard disk defragmentation fails. I am curious what he is now up to as he always had various projects in development.
Thank You Kindly
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Are you talking about the Norton Utilities suite?
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It is not Mr. Norton. Thanks anyway.
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Diskeeper (used to be known as Executive Software).
Perfect Disk (Raxco Software) - paid and free versions
Norton Utilities for NT also contained a defragger, but it is no longer recommended for use on modern NTFS drives (the spec. has changed since it was written).
Auslogics Disk Defrag - paid and free versions
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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I am sorry to say the product I am attempting to recall is none of those. I am not certain the purpose of the product was disk defragmentation as I distinctly recall his discussion of being in possession of specialized hard disk access technical knowledge giving him a competitive advantage. The only hard disk tool I can imagine requiring specialized knowledge is data recovery however I do not recall my need of such though I know as stated I had purchased a copy of his tool whatever it did so I am left befuddled and uncertain. I thank you for your kind effort of assistance.
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That bit about using assembler sounds like Steve Gibson, who created many products, and you may be thinking of Spinrite GRC | Hard drive data recovery software [^]
I still use a number of his utilities, eg quickly log off or sleep the PC. He is also very much into internet security.
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That's the first name that came to mind as well. His primary tool, SpinRite, isn't about defragging disks, but data recovery. It goes directly to the hardware, and tries way harder than any OS would to try to recover data from bad sectors. He's got some recordings of himself diving into the details of how it works internally.
He co-hosts a weekly podcast, Security Now, which is well worth listening to IMO if you're a geek with any sort of interest in computer security--only, without the clickbait-y headlines you'll see everywhere else. Still, he manages to find the time to keep coding, in assembler of all things, and is just about ready to release a new update to Spin-Rite (the first in nearly 20 years), if it hasn't happened yet.
The first time I heard of him, I believe, he was sounding some alarms about the way MS implemented their TCP/IP stack on XP (if I recall) and people were being rather dismissive of his warnings...but in the end, that's when MS had to introduce their built-in firewall in SP2.
I've been listening to his weekly podcast for years now, and clearly he's no quack, he takes the time to do his research and presents things in a logical and sound way, and he's a real stickler for accuracy. And the few times he's been wrong about anything, he's always owned up.
One type of comment you'll often come across regarding SpinRite is that it can actually be harmful to the hardware, because it's trying so hard to recover data. But those comments are typically coming from those who believe their actual hard disk is worth more than the information you're trying to recover, which goes against the very reason you want a tool that tries hard to recover data from a drive that has gone bad. SpinRite also has a maintenance mode, which is intended to be run regularly on drives that still have life left in them.
Anyway, I don't know what it is the OP was after (other than recalling the name), so I don't know if any of this is of any use. But, I've grown to be a fan, and I rarely miss an opportunity to present him in the positive light I honestly believe he deserves.
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I think you may be referring to Steve Gibson at GRC.com. All his utilities are written in pure assembly language and the majority of his utilities are freeware.
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Piriform Defraggler?
GCS/GE d--(d) s-/+ a C+++ U+++ P-- L+@ E-- W+++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
The shortest horror story: On Error Resume Next
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Chris - make sure CP's backups are golden. This thread is an excellent example of the priceless information that pops up from time to time.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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ditto
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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Your question makes me think even further back, when we could increase disk performance by formatting the disk with the proper interleaving factor. I can't remember, though: Was the interleave factor a parameter to the DOS 'format' command? Or was an external format program required? If so, what were the names of those programs?
For the youngsters: Interleaving meant that 'logical' disk sectors 0, 1, 2, ... were allocated at physical sectors 0, 2, 4, ... or 0, 3, 6, ... The disk electronics were so slow that after reading sector 0, it didn't 'recover' to read physical sector 1 until its sector head had passed, so you had to wait for a full rotation of the disk to read sector 1. Maybe the disk managed to make itself to read physical sector 2 in the time it took sector 1 passed, but maybe even this was not enough; it required the time for two physical sectors to pass, with logical sectors allocated on every third physical sectors. Obviously, the skipped sectors were not unused; they were allocated for the second and third rotation of the disk. To read an entire track, the disk had to spin 2 or 3 complete turns - but without interleaving it might require as many turns as a the number of sectors per track.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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I remember those days, even the venerable 386SX. Hard to fill up that 40 meg drive.
Spinrite is the only program that I remember doing it. Don't recall it being a parameter of the DOS format command.
>64
It’s weird being the same age as old people.
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Me: "who would write GUI code in assembler? that's not 10x that's insane"
Also me: probably guilty of writing a few lines of inline-asm, in the distant past, to thunk from a static callback function pointer to an instance-method
Also also me: (closes this web page and resumes reading tutorial on WebAsm)
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