Question

I am trying to write a program to approximate pi. It basically takes random points between 0.00 and 1.00 and compares them to the bound of a circle, and the ratio of points inside the circle to total points should approach pi (A very quick explanation, the specification goes in depth much more).

However, I am getting the following error when compiling with gcc:

Undefined                       first referenced
symbol                          in file
pow                             /var/tmp//cc6gSbfE.o
ld: fatal: symbol referencing errors. No output written to a.out
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

What is happening with this? I’ve never seen this error before, and I don’t know why it’s coming up. Here is my code (though I haven’t fully tested it since I can’t get past the error):

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <math.h>

int main(void) {
    float x, y;
    float coordSquared;
    float coordRoot;
    float ratio;
    int n;
    int count;
    int i;

    printf("Enter number of points: ");
    scanf("%d", &n);

    srand(time(0));

    for (i = 0; i < n; i++) {
        x = rand();
        y = rand();

        coordSquared = pow(x, 2) + pow(y, 2);
        coordRoot = pow(coordSquared, 0.5);

        if ((x < coordRoot) && (y < coordRoot)) {
            count++;
        }
    }

    ratio = count / n;
    ratio = ratio * 4;

    printf("Pi is approximately %f", ratio);

    return 0;
}

Answer 1

use -lm during compilation(or linking) to include math library.

Like this: gcc yourFile.c -o yourfile -lm