c

How do you do exponentiation in C?

I tried "x = y ** e", but that didn't work.

Solution

  • use the pow function (it takes floats/doubles though).

    man pow:

       #include <math.h>

   double pow(double x, double y);
   float powf(float x, float y);
   long double powl(long double x, long double y);

    EDIT: For the special case of positive integer powers of 2, you can use bit shifting: (1 << x) will equal 2 to the power x. There are some potential gotchas with this, but generally, it would be correct.