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NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | ATTRIBUTES | STANDARDS | HISTORY | BUGS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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pow(3) Library Functions Manual pow(3)
pow, powf, powl - power functions
Math library (libm, -lm)
#include <math.h>
double pow(double x, double y);
float powf(float x, float y);
long double powl(long double x, long double y);
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see
feature_test_macros(7)):
powf(), powl():
_ISOC99_SOURCE || _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200112L
|| /* Since glibc 2.19: */ _DEFAULT_SOURCE
|| /* glibc <= 2.19: */ _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE
These functions return the value of x raised to the power of y.
On success, these functions return the value of x to the power of
y.
If the result overflows, a range error occurs, and the functions
return HUGE_VAL, HUGE_VALF, or HUGE_VALL, respectively, with the
mathematically correct sign.
If result underflows, and is not representable, a range error
occurs, and 0.0 with the appropriate sign is returned.
If x is +0 or -0, and y is an odd integer less than 0, a pole
error occurs and HUGE_VAL, HUGE_VALF, or HUGE_VALL, is returned,
with the same sign as x.
If x is +0 or -0, and y is less than 0 and not an odd integer, a
pole error occurs and +HUGE_VAL, +HUGE_VALF, or +HUGE_VALL, is
returned.
If x is +0 (-0), and y is an odd integer greater than 0, the
result is +0 (-0).
If x is 0, and y greater than 0 and not an odd integer, the result
is +0.
If x is -1, and y is positive infinity or negative infinity, the
result is 1.0.
If x is +1, the result is 1.0 (even if y is a NaN).
If y is 0, the result is 1.0 (even if x is a NaN).
If x is a finite value less than 0, and y is a finite noninteger,
a domain error occurs, and a NaN is returned.
If the absolute value of x is less than 1, and y is negative
infinity, the result is positive infinity.
If the absolute value of x is greater than 1, and y is negative
infinity, the result is +0.
If the absolute value of x is less than 1, and y is positive
infinity, the result is +0.
If the absolute value of x is greater than 1, and y is positive
infinity, the result is positive infinity.
If x is negative infinity, and y is an odd integer less than 0,
the result is -0.
If x is negative infinity, and y less than 0 and not an odd
integer, the result is +0.
If x is negative infinity, and y is an odd integer greater than 0,
the result is negative infinity.
If x is negative infinity, and y greater than 0 and not an odd
integer, the result is positive infinity.
If x is positive infinity, and y less than 0, the result is +0.
If x is positive infinity, and y greater than 0, the result is
positive infinity.
Except as specified above, if x or y is a NaN, the result is a
NaN.
See math_error(7) for information on how to determine whether an
error has occurred when calling these functions.
The following errors can occur:
Domain error: x is negative, and y is a finite noninteger
errno is set to EDOM. An invalid floating-point exception
(FE_INVALID) is raised.
Pole error: x is zero, and y is negative
errno is set to ERANGE (but see BUGS). A divide-by-zero
floating-point exception (FE_DIVBYZERO) is raised.
Range error: the result overflows
errno is set to ERANGE. An overflow floating-point
exception (FE_OVERFLOW) is raised.
Range error: the result underflows
errno is set to ERANGE. An underflow floating-point
exception (FE_UNDERFLOW) is raised.
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see
attributes(7).
┌──────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┬─────────┐
│ Interface │ Attribute │ Value │
├──────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┼─────────┤
│ pow(), powf(), powl() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe │
└──────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴─────────┘
C11, POSIX.1-2008.
C99, POSIX.1-2001.
The variant returning double also conforms to SVr4, 4.3BSD, C89.
Historical bugs (now fixed)
Before glibc 2.28, on some architectures (e.g., x86-64) pow() may
be more than 10,000 times slower for some inputs than for other
nearby inputs. This affects only pow(), and not powf() nor
powl(). This problem was fixed in glibc 2.28.
A number of bugs in the glibc implementation of pow() were fixed
in glibc 2.16.
In glibc 2.9 and earlier, when a pole error occurs, errno is set
to EDOM instead of the POSIX-mandated ERANGE. Since glibc 2.10,
glibc does the right thing.
In glibc 2.3.2 and earlier, when an overflow or underflow error
occurs, glibc's pow() generates a bogus invalid floating-point
exception (FE_INVALID) in addition to the overflow or underflow
exception.
cbrt(3), cpow(3), sqrt(3)
This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library
user-space interface documentation) project. Information about
the project can be found at
⟨https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/⟩. If you have a bug report
for this manual page, see
⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/CONTRIBUTING⟩.
This page was obtained from the tarball man-pages-6.15.tar.gz
fetched from
⟨https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/⟩ on
2025-08-11. If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML
version of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-
to-date source for the page, or you have corrections or
improvements to the information in this COLOPHON (which is not
part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
Linux man-pages 6.15 2025-05-17 pow(3)
Pages that refer to this page: cbrt(3), cpow(3), pow10(3)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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