Unnecessary unary minus

Reports unnecessary unary minuses. Such expressions might be hard to understand and might contain errors.

For example:

void unaryMinus(int i) {
    int x = - -i;
  }

The following quick fixes are suggested here:

Remove - operators before the i variable:
void unaryMinus(int i) { int x = i; }
Replace - operators with the prefix decrement operator:
void unaryMinus(int i) { int x = --i; }

Another example:

void unaryMinus(int i) {
    i += - 8;
  }

After the quick-fix is applied:

void unaryMinus(int i) {
    i -= 8;
  }

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

UnnecessaryUnaryMinus

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Java | Numeric issues

Inspection ID: UnnecessaryUnaryMinus

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection UnnecessaryUnaryMinus

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

IntelliJ IDEA 2025.3

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	IntelliJ IDEA 2025.3, Qodana for JVM 2025.3,

Last modified: 03 December 2025