Inverse Trigonometric Functions

These are the usual arc sine, arc cosine and arc tangent functions, which are the inverses of the sine, cosine and tangent functions, respectively.

Function: double asin (double x)

This function computes the arc sine of x---that is, the value whose sine is x. The value is in units of radians. Mathematically, there are infinitely many such values; the one actually returned is the one between -pi/2 and pi/2 (inclusive).

asin fails, and sets errno to EDOM, if x is out of range. The arc sine function is defined mathematically only over the domain -1 to 1.

Function: double acos (double x)

This function computes the arc cosine of x---that is, the value whose cosine is x. The value is in units of radians. Mathematically, there are infinitely many such values; the one actually returned is the one between 0 and pi (inclusive).

acos fails, and sets errno to EDOM, if x is out of range. The arc cosine function is defined mathematically only over the domain -1 to 1.

Function: double atan (double x)

This function computes the arc tangent of x---that is, the value whose tangent is x. The value is in units of radians. Mathematically, there are infinitely many such values; the one actually returned is the one between -pi/2 and pi/2 (inclusive).

Function: double atan2 (double y, double x)

This is the two argument arc tangent function. It is similar to computing the arc tangent of y/x, except that the signs of both arguments are used to determine the quadrant of the result, and x is permitted to be zero. The return value is given in radians and is in the range -pi to pi, inclusive.

If x and y are coordinates of a point in the plane, atan2 returns the signed angle between the line from the origin to that point and the x-axis. Thus, atan2 is useful for converting Cartesian coordinates to polar coordinates. (To compute the radial coordinate, use hypot; see section Exponentiation and Logarithms.)

The function atan2 sets errno to EDOM if both x and y are zero; the return value is not defined in this case.

Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.