Headers Inclusion

The easiest way to access to the library is by including the main header:

#include <boost/numeric/interval.hpp>

This header will include almost all the other headers (except the ones listed as extensions). However, you may not want to access all the functionalities of the library. So this page stands as a reminder for the whole structure of the library. <boost/numeric/interval.hpp> is the only header to be located directly under boost/numeric; all the other headers are located in the subdirectory boost/numeric/interval. And each time this documentation will refer to interval/something.hpp, it is <boost/numeric/interval/something.hpp>.

Please also note that all the following headers are independent and can easily be pre-compiled if necessary (for compilers which support pre-compiled headers of course).

Function definitions

The following headers contain the definition of the interval class and all the friendly functions and operators.

interval/interval.hpp

This header contains the definition and the declaration of the interval class. However, this class is templated and the default template parameters are not available by this header. In particular, this header does not provide the default specialization of the interval class for the floating-point types (interval<float>, interval<double> and interval<long double>). So, unless you use your own policies, this header is not really useful on its own.

interval/utility.hpp

In this header are all the functions that do not expect any arithmetic property from the base number type. It only expects the bounds to be ordered; but it should not surprise you since it is a requirement of the whole library. You will find in this header the definitions of access and related functions: lower, upper, checked_lower, checked_upper, median, width, widen. There are also the set-like functions: in, in_zero, empty, subset, proper_subset, overlap, singleton, equal, intersect, hull, bisect. Finally, abs, min and max are defined.

interval/arith.hpp

Here are the binary operators +, -, *, / and the unary operator -.

interval/arith2.hpp

This header defines fmod, square, sqrt and pow.

interval/arith3.hpp

The third arithmetic header: it provides the functions add, sub, mul, div. The type of their arguments is the base number type.

interval/transc.hpp

It is the last of the headers with mathematical functions; it provides the following functions: cos, sin, tan, acos, asin, atan, cosh, sinh, tanh, acosh, asinh, atanh, exp and log.

Policies

The following headers define some policies. They may be needed if you use the default policies.

interval/rounded_arith.hpp

This header defines the three provided rounding policies for the arithmetic functions: rounded_arith_std, rounded_arith_opp, rounded_arith_exact.

interval/rounded_transc.hpp

This header defines the three provided rounding policies for the transcendental functions: rounded_transc_std, rounded_transc_opp, rounded_transc_exact. It is separated from rounded_arith.hpp since the transcendental part of the rounding policy is probably less useful than the arithmetic part.

interval/hw_rounding.hpp

Here are full rounding policies for the basic floating-point types. The policies are processor-dependent; and to allow the user code to be portable, they only define the common subset of the hardware available functions, which are the arithmetic functions of the rounding policy.

interval/checking.hpp

This header provides the predefined checking policies: checking_base, checking_no_empty, checking_no_nan, checking_catch_nan, checking_strict.

interval/policies.hpp

Here are defined the helpers for manipulating policies. It contains policies (and so is needed for using default policies), change_rounding, change_checking, unprotect, etc.

Comparisons

interval/compare.hpp

This header includes all the following headers. They provide some predefined comparison namespaces.

interval/compare/certain.hpp

Here is compare::certain.

interval/compare/possible.hpp

And here is its friend compare::possible.

interval/compare/explicit.hpp

The explicit comparison functions cerlt, posge, etc are defined in this header.

interval/compare/lexicographic.hpp

This header provides compare::lexicographic.

interval/compare/set.hpp

This header provides compare::set.

Extensions

The following headers are not included by interval.hpp and will usually provide not always desirable capabilities.

interval/io.hpp

Here are defined basic stream operators << and >>. They should only be used as a first approach and later be replaced by a customized version.

interval/limits.hpp

A specialization of std::numeric_limits adapted to the interval type.

interval/compare/tribool.hpp

This header provides a comparison namespace compare::tribool especially adapted to a tristate boolean.

interval/ext/integer.hpp

This header provides mixed operations between intervals and integers. It is done by converting the integer to the base number type. Because this comparison is not always correct (for a big int may not be exactly convertible to float), this header is not automatically included and the user should ensure that this behavior is compatible with what she wants to do (if it is only to multiply some intervals by 2, it probably is a good thing to include this header).

interval/ext/x86_fast_rounding_control.hpp

This header defines a new rounding policy allowing to workaround the precision problem of the x86 processors (and so speeding up the computations). However, it only is a partial solution and it shouldn't be used when there is a possibility of underflow or overflow.

Revised: 2003-04-22
Copyright (c) Guillaume Melquiond, Sylvain Pion, Hervé Brönnimann, 2002. Polytechnic University.
Copyright (c) Guillaume Melquiond, 2003.