4.10 Mathematical functions

There are quite a number of useful functions hard-wired into GiNaC. For instance, all trigonometric and hyperbolic functions are implemented (See section Predefined mathematical functions, for a complete list).

These functions (better called pseudofunctions) are all objects of class function. They accept one or more expressions as arguments and return one expression. If the arguments are not numerical, the evaluation of the function may be halted, as it does in the next example, showing how a function returns itself twice and finally an expression that may be really useful:

    ...
    symbol x("x"), y("y");    
    ex foo = x+y/2;
    cout << tgamma(foo) << endl;
     // -> tgamma(x+(1/2)*y)
    ex bar = foo.subs(y==1);
    cout << tgamma(bar) << endl;
     // -> tgamma(x+1/2)
    ex foobar = bar.subs(x==7);
    cout << tgamma(foobar) << endl;
     // -> (135135/128)*Pi^(1/2)
    ...

Besides evaluation most of these functions allow differentiation, series expansion and so on. Read the next chapter in order to learn more about this.

It must be noted that these pseudofunctions are created by inline functions, where the argument list is templated. This means that whenever you call GiNaC::sin(1) it is equivalent to sin(ex(1)) and will therefore not result in a floating point number. Unless of course the function prototype is explicitly overridden – which is the case for arguments of type numeric (not wrapped inside an ex). Hence, in order to obtain a floating point number of class numeric you should call sin(numeric(1)). This is almost the same as calling sin(1).evalf() except that the latter will return a numeric wrapped inside an ex.