Question

I have always wondered what is best practice when checking numbers are 1 or greater.

IF($foo > 0)

OR

IF($foo >= 1)

Which one should I be using? They both appear to work the same.

Answer 1

When it comes to performance, you would like to use >= instead of >.

My benchmark in pseudo:

for 100000x {
    time result of 5 > 0
}

for 100000x {
    time result of 5 >= 1
}

Edit: and as William in the comments suggested to time the whole for-loop, that’s exactly what happened. I added up all the times together which gave me the exact same result as timing the whole for-loop at once. So basically I did the same. (FYI. I benchmarked William his suggestion, it had the same results. Trust me, I’m an engineer)

My results:

          >                 >=
x100000 | 198.63224029541 | 191.68829917908
In MS

So, when it comes to speed and you are using integers (see the great answers above!), >= would be faster. But, consider the consequences! It’s only 7ms over a 100.000 tests. But, when you are having a couple of million records to check…

edit

After a couple of more times running the benchmark, I get even bigger differences. Differences like 10, 15 and even 20 ms! Nothing was changed, apparently my processor was busy, but it is good sharing it with you guys.