exp()

In Lua, the math.exp() function is a standard function that is used to calculate the exponential value of a number, i.e, the exponential constant ‘e’ (which is roughly equal to 2.718281828459045) raised to a given value.

Exponents are a very common part of mathematical operations across a wide variety of fields and disciplines such as physics, engineering, probability and statistics, and even machine learning! This means that the math.exp() function is a very useful and widely applicable tool for Lua developers.

As a side-note, the math.log() function in the math library returns the inverse of the math.exp() function.

Syntax

As exp() is a method that is a part of the standard Lua math library, to use this function it must be called as math.exp().

math.exp(mycoolvalue) -- Returns the result of e raised to the power of mycoolvalue

Example 1

To find the exponential value of 0,

print(math.exp(0))

This results in the following output:

1.0

Example 2

Similarly, to find the exponential value of 8,

print(math.exp(8))

This results in the following output:

2980.9579870417

As math.log() is the inverse of math.exp(),

print(math.log(2980.9579870417))

This results in the following output:

8.0