erfc, erfcf, erfcl - complementary error function
Contents
Attributes
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┬─────────┐
│ Interface │ Attribute │ Value │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┼─────────┤
│ erfc(), erfcf(), erfcl() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴─────────┘
Description
These functions return the complementary error function of x, that is, 1.0 - erf(x).
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.
History
C99, POSIX.1-2001.
The variant returning double also conforms to SVr4, 4.3BSD.
Library
Math library (libm, -lm)
Name
erfc, erfcf, erfcl - complementary error function
Notes
The erfc(), erfcf(), and erfcl() 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).
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.
See Also
cerf(3), erf(3), exp(3) Linux man-pages 6.9.1 2024-05-02 erfc(3)
Standards
C11, POSIX.1-2008.
Synopsis
#include<math.h>doubleerfc(doublex);floaterfcf(floatx);longdoubleerfcl(longdoublex); Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)): erfc(): _ISOC99_SOURCE || _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200112L || _XOPEN_SOURCE || /* Since glibc 2.19: */ _DEFAULT_SOURCE || /* glibc <= 2.19: */ _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE erfcf(), erfcl(): _ISOC99_SOURCE || _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200112L || /* Since glibc 2.19: */ _DEFAULT_SOURCE || /* glibc <= 2.19: */ _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE
