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ERFC

Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (3)
Updated: 2010-09-20
Index Return to Main Contents

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NAME

erfc, erfcf, erfcl - complementary error function  

SYNOPSIS

#include <math.h>

double erfc(double x);
float erfcf(float x);
long double erfcl(long double x);

Link with -lm.

Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

erfc():

_BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE || _ISOC99_SOURCE || _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200112L;
or cc -std=c99

erfcf(), erfcl():

_BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE >= 600|| _ISOC99_SOURCE || _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200112L;
or cc -std=c99

 

DESCRIPTION

The erfc() function returns the complementary error function of x, that is, 1.0 - erf(x).  

RETURN VALUE

On success, these functions return the complementary error function of x, a value in the range [0,2].

If x is a NaN, a NaN is returned.

If x is +0 or -0, 1 is returned.

If x is positive infinity, +0 is returned.

If x is negative infinity, +2 is returned.

If the function result underflows and produces an unrepresentable value, the return value is 0.0.

If the function result underflows but produces a representable (i.e., subnormal) value, that value is returned, and a range error occurs.  

ERRORS

See math_error(7) for information on how to determine whether an error has occurred when calling these functions.

The following errors can occur:

Range error: result underflow (result is subnormal)

An underflow floating-point exception (FE_UNDERFLOW) is raised.

These functions do not set errno.  

CONFORMING TO

C99, POSIX.1-2001. The variant returning double also conforms to SVr4, 4.3BSD.  

NOTES

The erfc() functions are provided to avoid the loss accuracy that would occur for the calculation 1-erf(x) for large values of x (for which the value of erf(x) approaches 1).  

SEE ALSO

cerf(3), erf(3), exp(3)  

COLOPHON

This page is part of release 3.35 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/.

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Index

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

RETURN VALUE

ERRORS

CONFORMING TO

NOTES

SEE ALSO

COLOPHON

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