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PWR032: Avoid calls to mathematical functions with higher precision than required

Issue​

Not calling the most suitable mathematical function for a given data type results in unnecessary data type conversions and higher precision operations, which are slower.

Actions​

Replace the mathematical function call with its alternative version matching the data type.

Relevance​

In C, there are several versions of the same mathematical function for different types. For example, the square root function is available for floats, doubles and long doubles through sqrtf, sqrt and sqrtl, respectively. Oftentimes, the developer who is not careful will not use the function matching the data type. For instance, most developers will just use "sqrt" for any data type, instead of using sqrtf when the argument is float.

The type mismatch does not cause a compiler error because of the implicit type conversions. However, this practice will result in suboptimal code due to expensive calculations with unnecessary high precision and data type conversions.

Code example​

The following code uses the sin function to calculate the sine of the float variable x and store the result in the variable res:

#include <math.h>

void example(float x) {
  float res = sin(x);
}

This causes a conversion of x to a double that is passed to function sin and another of the result which has type double into a float to be stored into the variable res. These two conversion operations can be prevented by using the most appropriate function sinf which matches the float data type:

#include <math.h>

void example(float x) {
  float res = sinf(x);
}

References​