Difference between sqrt(x) and pow(x,0.5)

c, c++, sqrt

Solution

I ran a test for you to check the performance of `sqrt(x)` and `pow(x,0.5)`

1.

for(int i=0;i<100000000;i++) 
    pow(double(i),0.5);

2.

for(int i=0;i<100000000;i++)
    sqrt(double(i));  

1st one took around 20 seconds where as 2nd one took around 2 seconds on my computer. So performance is way better. As other have already mentioned readability is other reason.

Problem

I was wondering why there is sqrt() function in C/c++ as we can achieve the same using ``` pow(x,0.5); ``` how is `sqrt(x)` different for `pow(x,0.5)` . Is there a specific reason of having sqrt function?

Original source

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