I tried \"x = y ** e\", but that didn\'t work.
use the pow function (it takes floats/doubles though).
man pow:
#include
double pow(double x, double y);
float powf(float x, float y);
long double powl(long double x, long double y);
EDIT: For the special case of positive integer powers of 2, you can use bit shifting: (1 << x) will equal 2 to the power x. There are some potential gotchas with this, but generally, it would be correct.