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In the C Programming Language, the pow function returns x raised to the power of y.
C++ does not include an exponent operator. Note that the parameters (and return value) of function pow() are of type double.
But in C, there is no built-in exponentiation operator, and the ^ operator is used for bitwise exclusive or (i.e., bitwise XOR). In C, the pow library function (with its siblings powf and powl) performs exponentiation.
C++ does have a power operator—it's written pow(x, y).
Originally, C was designed with system software in mind, and
there wasn't much need for a power operator. (But it has
bitwise operators, like & and |, which are absent in a lot
of other languages.) There was some discussion of adding one
during standardization of C++, but the final consensus was more
or less:
It couldn't be ^, because the priority was wrong (and of
course, having 2. ^ 8 == 256., but 2 ^ 8 == 10 isn't very
pleasant either).
It couldn't be **, because that would break existing
programs (which might have something like x**p, with x an
int, and p an int*).
It could be *^, because this sequence isn't currently legal
in C or C++. But this would still require introducing an
additional level of precedence.
C and C++ already had enough special tokens and levels of
precedence, and after discussions with the numerics community,
it was concluded that there really wasn't anything wrong with
pow(x, y).
So C++ left things as they were, and this doesn't seem to have caused any problems.
For two reasons
The symbol ^ is reserved for bit-wise xor operation
You may use std::pow to achieve the same functionality.
The nice thing about C++ is that you can overload the operator to do whatever you like it to do!
template< typename T >
T operator^( T x, T y ) {
return std::pow( x, y );
}
However take into account that when you do that, other people who know C++ and don't know you (and I believe there are quite a few of those) might have significant problems understanding your code!
Because that's the exclusive or bitwise operator.
There are functions called "pow" that do what you want though.
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