Why aren t cmath s pow and sqrt templates

Question

I'm curious as to why std::sqrt and std::pow are overloaded for only one kind of argument.

Why don't they use function/functor templates instead?

Answer 1

The letter 'c' in <cmath> refers to a group of C library functions.

By analogy, <stdio.h> may be included in C++ as< cstdio>, and as C lacks templates, nothing in <cmath> does either.

Aside from that, what benefit would parameterizing the type provide?

These functions accept and return doubles, which you can always convert to an int or a float if necessary.

On the second issue, I stand corrected: as M.A. and Francois Andrieux point out, there are occasions when this might be advantageous.

However, I believe the answer still applies in terms of <cmath>.