Boost C++ Libraries

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The Greatest Common Divisor and Least Common Multiple library provides run-time and compile-time evaluation of the greatest common divisor (GCD) or least common multiple (LCM) of two integers.

The Special Functions library currently provides eight templated special functions, in namespace boost. Two of these (sinc_pi and sinhc_pi) are needed by our implementation of quaternions and octonions. The functions acosh, asinh and atanh are entirely classical, the function sinc_pi sees heavy use in signal processing tasks, and the function sinhc_pi is an ad'hoc function whose naming is modelled on sinc_pi and hyperbolic functions. The functions log1p, expm1 and hypot are all part of the C99 standard but not yet C++. Two of these (log1p and hypot) were needed for the complex number inverse trigonometric functions.

The Complex Number Inverse Trigonometric Functions are the inverses of trigonometric functions currently present in the C++ standard. Equivalents to these functions are part of the C99 standard, and they will be part of the forthcoming Technical Report on C++ Standard Library Extensions.

Quaternions are a relative of complex numbers often used to parameterise rotations in three dimentional space.

Octonions, like quaternions, are a relative of complex numbers. Octonions see some use in theoretical physics.