"Just your choice of -! and 0 for the comparators, tells the whole story." Um, what is "-!?" What I wrote was a lower case l, not a 1 certainly not a ! Your reading makes no sense even if you read -l and -1.
Let me add that it's dangerous, in general, to assume that your interpretation is the only one that makes sense to anybody. In fact, this 'soft bash' stuff is very stupid but I understand where you must be coming from, GLTY in any case..