Visual Studio std::pow implementations

pow

After an upgrade of Visual Studio 2017 to 2019 it was noticed that regression tests were failing with the new version. There were multiple causes; one of them was that (yet again) the implementation of std::pow had changed.

 The Visual Studio 2017 implementation uses a different code path for the common power 2 (square) case: it issues a simple multiplication. The implementation is something like this:

_Check_return_ inline double pow(_In_ double _Xx, _In_ int _Yx) noexcept
       {
       if (_Yx == 2)
              return (_Xx * _Xx);

       return (_CSTD pow(_Xx, static_cast<double>(_Yx)));
       }

 The Visual Studio 2019 implementation isn't available in source code form but the exceptional code path for calculating the square seems not present anymore. This gives (small) differences with some numbers, e.g. the square of '0.10000000055703842' gives a different result.

Alternative

Luckily boost offers an alternative for calculating squared and other integer powers known at compile time in its math library:

#include <boost/math/special_functions/pow.hpp>

constexpr double d = 0.10000000055703842;

const double d2 = boost::math::pow<2>(d);

 Using this function should give stable result for the coming upgrades of Visual Studio. It has also the extra benefit of better performance. Results of a test case with running many power calculations:

Function	Time (s)
boost::math::pow<2>	0.241
std::pow	9.395

  Note that instead of using a power function direct multiplication is ofc also possible. Often though these power functions are fed with another calculated value which otherwise has to be duplicated or write down explicitly:

const double d = std::sqrt(boost::math::pow<2>(pt.x - x) + boost::math::pow<2>(pt.y - y));

 Boost's math::pow has the extra benefit of doing the least amount of multiplications in case the power is larger than 3.