Math Functions

Introduction to the Math Libraries

The controls on your applications will receive strings of various kinds either supplied by the user or gotten from other controls. Some of the values on these controls will be involved in mathematical operations. The C++ language provides a rich set of functions to help you quickly perform different types of calculations. The functions range from arithmetic to geometry, from trigonometry to algebra, etc. To compensate for the areas where C++ does not expand, instead of writing your own functions, The Visual Component Library (VCL) is equipped with various functions that, besides geometry and algebra, deal with finance, statistics, random number generation, etc. Because there are so many of these functions and they get added with each new release of the library, we will review only the most common used.

By default, the content of a text control, such as an edit box, is a string, which is an array of characters. If you want the value or content of such a control to participate in a mathematical operation, you must first convert such a value to a mathematically compatible value.