Question: What is -0 all about?

On top of all the serious problems in producing questions for Maple TA, we have to contend with silly bugs like this: $a=0; $d=0; $b=$a+$d; $b is given the value -0. This looks ugly and may cause confusion if it's used in a question. I've got round this by setting $b=int($a+$d). Is there some reason why -0 is a valid result for 0+0, or is this just sloppy programming?
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