| Home | Libraries | People | FAQ | More

### Implementation

In this section we'll provide a "recipe" for adding a new special function to this library to make life easier for future authors wishing to contribute. We'll assume the function returns a single floating point result, and takes two floating point arguments. For the sake of exposistion we'll give the function the name "my_special".

Normally the implementation of such a function is split into two layers - a public user layer, and an internal implementation layer that does the actual work. The implementation layer is declared inside a "detail" namespace and has a simple signature:

    namespace boost{ namespace math{ namespace detail{

    template <class T, class Policy>
    T my_special_imp(const T& a, const T&b, const Policy& pol)
    {
       /* Implementation goes here */
    }

    }}} // namespaces

We'll come back to what can go inside the implementation later, but first lets look at the user layer. This consists of two overloads of the function, with and without a Policy argument:

    namespace boost{ namespace math{

    template <class T, class U>
    typename tools::promote_args<T, U>::type my_special(const T& a, const U& b);

    template <class T, class U, class Policy>
    typename tools::promote_args<T, U>::type my_special(const T& a, const U& b, const Policy& pol);

    }} // namespaces

Note how each argument has a different template type - this allows for mixed type arguments - the return type is computed from a traits class and is the "common type" of all the arguments after any integer arguments have been promoted to type `double`.

The implementation of the non-policy overload is trivial:

    namespace boost{ namespace math{

    template <class T, class U>
    inline typename tools::promote_args<T, U>::type my_special(const T& a, const U& b)
    {
       // Simply forward with a default policy:
       return my_special(a, b, policies::policy<>();
    }

    }} // namespaces

The implementation of the other overload is somewhat more complex, as there's some meta-programming to do, but from a runtime perspective is still a one-line forwarding function. Here it is with comments explaining what each line does:

    namespace boost{ namespace math{

    template <class T, class U, class Policy>
    inline typename tools::promote_args<T, U>::type my_special(const T& a, const U& b, const Policy& pol)
    {
       //
       // We've found some standard library functions to misbehave if any FPU exception flags
       // are set prior to their call, this code will clear those flags, then reset them
       // on exit:
       //
       BOOST_FPU_EXCEPTION_GUARD
       //
       // The type of the result - the common type of T and U after
       // any integer types have been promoted to double:
       //
       typedef typename tools::promote_args<T, U>::type result_type;
       //
       // The type used for the calculation.  This may be a wider type than
       // the result in order to ensure full precision:
       //
       typedef typename policies::evaluation<result_type, Policy>::type value_type;
       //
       // The type of the policy to forward to the actual implementation.
       // We disable promotion of float and double as that's [possibly]
       // happened already in the line above.  Also reset to the default
       // any policies we don't use (reduces code bloat if we're called
       // multiple times with differing policies we don't actually use).
       // Also normalise the type, again to reduce code bloat in case we're
       // called multiple times with functionally identical policies that happen
       // to be different types.
       //
       typedef typename policies::normalise<
          Policy,
          policies::promote_float<false>,
          policies::promote_double<false>,
          policies::discrete_quantile<>,
          policies::assert_undefined<> >::type forwarding_policy;
       //
       // Whew.  Now we can make the actual call to the implementation.
       // Arguments are explicitly cast to the evaluation type, and the result
       // passed through checked_narrowing_cast which handles things like overflow
       // according to the policy passed:
       //
       return policies::checked_narrowing_cast<result_type, forwarding_policy>(
             detail::my_special_imp(
                   static_cast<value_type>(a),
                   static_cast<value_type>(x),
                   forwarding_policy()),
             "boost::math::my_special<%1%>(%1%, %1%)");
    }

    }} // namespaces

We're now almost there, we just need to flesh out the details of the implementation layer:

    namespace boost{ namespace math{ namespace detail{

    template <class T, class Policy>
    T my_special_imp(const T& a, const T&b, const Policy& pol)
    {
       /* Implementation goes here */
    }

    }}} // namespaces

The following guidelines indicate what (other than basic arithmetic) can go in the implementation:

- Error conditions (for example bad arguments) should be handled by calling one of the policy based error handlers.
- Calls to standard library functions should be made unqualified (this allows argument dependent lookup to find standard library functions for user-defined floating point types such as those from Boost.Multiprecision). In addition the macro `BOOST_MATH_STD_USING` should appear at the start of the function (note no semi-colon afterwards!) so that all the math functions in `namespace std` are visible in the current scope.
- Calls to other special functions should be made as fully qualified calls, and include the policy parameter as the last argument, for example `boost::math::tgamma(a, pol)`.
- Where possible, evaluation of series, continued fractions, polynomials, or root finding should use one of the boiler plate functions. In any case, after any iterative method, you should verify that the number of iterations did not exceed the maximum specified in the Policy type, and if it did terminate as a result of exceeding the maximum, then the appropriate error handler should be called (see existing code for examples).
- Numeric constants such as π etc should be obtained via a call to the appropriate function, for example: `constants::pi<T>()`.
- Where tables of coefficients are used (for example for rational approximations), care should be taken to ensure these are initialized at program startup to ensure thread safety when using user-defined number types. See for example the use of `erf_initializer` in boost/math/special_functions/erf.hpp.

Here are some other useful internal functions:

function | Meaning
--- | ---
`policies::digits<T, Policy>()` | Returns number of binary digits in T (possible overridden by the policy).
`policies::get_max_series_iterations<Policy>()` | Maximum number of iterations for series evaluation.
`policies::get_max_root_iterations<Policy>()` | Maximum number of iterations for root finding.
`polices::get_epsilon<T, Policy>()` | Epsilon for type T, possibly overridden by the Policy.
`tools::digits<T>()` | Returns the number of binary digits in T.
`tools::max_value<T>()` | Equivalent to `std::numeric_limits<T>::max()`
`tools::min_value<T>()` | Equivalent to `std::numeric_limits<T>::min()`
`tools::log_max_value<T>()` | Equivalent to the natural logarithm of `std::numeric_limits<T>::max()`
`tools::log_min_value<T>()` | Equivalent to the natural logarithm of `std::numeric_limits<T>::min()`
`tools::epsilon<T>()` | Equivalent to `std::numeric_limits<T>::epsilon()`.
`tools::root_epsilon<T>()` | Equivalent to the square root of `std::numeric_limits<T>::epsilon()`.
`tools::forth_root_epsilon<T>()` | Equivalent to the forth root of `std::numeric_limits<T>::epsilon()`.