Why is negative one (-1) elevated to the power of an even integer returning always the same result in Julia?

Question

I'm currently executing the following (very simple) code in Julia:

-1^2

But for some reason the result is always:

-1

Now, if I put in parenthesis, then the answer is correct. So I'm curious as to why this is happening. I'm running this on a Jupyter Notebook.

This is just how it is. The order of operations places exponentiation before negation so -1^2 is the same as -(1^2) — Countingstuff, May 29 '21 at 19:09
If in doubt, you can call `Meta.@dump -1^2` or `Meta.show_sexpr(:(-1^2))` to see what it is thinking. — mcabbott, May 29 '21 at 19:44

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered May 29 '21 at 19:21

4

This is due to order of operations. Exponentiation takes precedence over Subtraction, so you get -(1^n) which is always -1.

answered May 29 '21 at 19:21

Ashwin Rohit

1 Answers1