What's the difference between abs and fabs?

Question

I checked the difference between abs and fabs on python here

As I understand there are some difference regarding the speed and the passed types, but my question related to native c++ on V.S.

Regarding the V.S. I tried the following on Visual Studio 2013 (v120):

float f1= abs(-9.2); // f = 9.2 float f2= fabs(-9); // Compile error [*] 

So fabs(-9) it will give me a compiler error, but when I tried to do the following:

double i = -9; float f2= fabs(i); // This will work fine 

What I understand from the first code that it will not compile because fabs(-9) need a double, and the compiler could not convert -9 to -9.0, but in the second code the compiler will convert i=-9 to i=-9.0 at compile time so fabs(i) will work fine.

Any better explanation?

Another thing, why the compiler can't accept fabs(-9) and convert the int value to double automatically like what we have in c#?

[*]:  Error: more than one instance of overloaded function "fabs" matches the argument list:         function "fabs(double _X)"         function "fabs(float _X)"         function "fabs(long double _X)"         argument types are: (int)    

Answer 1

In C++, std::abs is overloaded for both signed integer and floating point types. std::fabs only deals with floating point types (pre C++11). Note that the std:: is important; the C function ::abs that is commonly available for legacy reasons will only handle int!

The problem with

float f2= fabs(-9); 

is not that there is no conversion from int (the type of -9) to double, but that the compiler does not know which conversion to pick (int -> float, double, long double) since there is a std::fabs for each of those three. Your workaround explicitly tells the compiler to use the int -> double conversion, so the ambiguity goes away.

C++11 solves this by adding double fabs( Integral arg ); which will return the abs of any integer type converted to double. Apparently, this overload is also available in C++98 mode with libstdc++ and libc++.

In general, just use std::abs, it will do the right thing. (Interesting pitfall pointed out by @Shafik Yaghmour. Unsigned integer types do funny things in C++.)