Thought of another likely question. Minor wording change to make more sense.
Memory improvement, these are always explicitly set, no need to pre-fill the value here
Memory improvement, this variable doesn't need to be copied around and is already re-initialized each place it is used
Reduce the number of assignments since all checks were being done each time anyway
Integers are less expensive, and reduces the number of function calls, too
The tool used to do the previous few memory enhancements