How to raise a number to a power?

Question

I was trying to raise an integer to a power using the caret operator (^), but I am getting surprising results, e.g.:

assert_eq!(2^10, 8); 

How can I perform exponentiation in Rust?

Answer 1

Rust provides exponentiation via methods pow and checked_pow. The latter guards against overflows. Thus, to raise 2 to the power of 10, do:

let base: i32 = 2; // an explicit type is required assert_eq!(base.pow(10), 1024); 

The caret operator ^ is not used for exponentiation, it's the bitwise XOR operator.

Answer 2

Here is the simplest method which you can use:

let a = 2; // Can also explicitly define type i.e. i32 let a = i32::pow(a, 10); 

It will output "2 raised to the power of 10", i.e.:

1024