std::pow with integer parameters, comparing to an integer type

Question

According to http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/numeric/math/pow , when std::pow is used with integer parameters, the result is promoted to a double.

Answer 1

It is funny you should ask, because someone else on StackOverflow had a question that was caused by the very fact that pow applied to small integers did not compute the obvious result on their platform (see also my writeup).

So yes, when applying pow to small integers, both arguments and ideal mathematical result are exactly representable. This does not force the implementation of exp to return the mathematical result, because no standard specifies that pow cannot be inaccurate by more than one ULP. And at least one very popular platform provides by default a pow function that does not compute pow(10, 2) as 100, but you are free to take you chances with pow(2, N) and perhaps it will happen to always return the integer you are entitled to expect.