hypot

Square root of sum of squares (hypotenuse)

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Syntax

C = hypot(A,B)

Description

C = hypot(A,B) returns the hypotenuse of a right triangle with side lengths of A and B. This function computes C = sqrt(abs(A).^2 + abs(B).^2) by avoiding underflow and overflow.

example

Examples

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Open Live Script

Compute the hypotenuse of a right triangle with side lengths of 3 and 4.

C = hypot(3,4)
C = 
5
Open Live Script

Examine the difference between using hypot and coding the basic hypot equation in M-code.

Create an anonymous function that performs essentially the same basic function as hypot.

myhypot = @(a,b)sqrt(abs(a).^2+abs(b).^2);

myhypot does not have the same consideration for underflow and overflow behavior that hypot offers.

Find the upper limit at which myhypot returns a useful value. You can see that this test function reaches its maximum at about 1e154, returning an infinite result at that point.

myhypot(1e153,1e153)
ans = 
1.4142e+153

myhypot(1e154,1e154)
ans = 
Inf

Do the same using the hypot function, and observe that hypot operates on values up to about 1e308, which is approximately equal to the value for realmax on your computer (the largest representable double-precision floating-point number).

hypot(1e308,1e308)
ans = 
1.4142e+308

hypot(1e309,1e309)
ans = 
Inf

Input Arguments

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Input arrays, specified as scalars, vectors, matrices, or multidimensional arrays. Inputs A and B must either be the same size or have sizes that are compatible (for example, A is an M-by-N matrix and B is a scalar or 1-by-N row vector). For more information, see Compatible Array Sizes for Basic Operations.

If one or both inputs is NaN, then hypot returns NaN.

Data Types: single | double
Complex Number Support: Yes

More About

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Extended Capabilities

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GPU Code Generation
Generate CUDA® code for NVIDIA® GPUs using GPU Coder™.

Version History

Introduced before R2006a

See Also

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