cabs(3)

✨ cabs — bestie edition ✨

okay so real talk, welcome to cabs(3), the manual page for cabs, cabsf, and cabsl — aka absolute value of a complex number. yes the whole squad is here 💖

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🫶 NAME

cabs, cabsf, cabsl — absolute value of a complex number. that's it, that's the job. iconic behavior honestly.

📚 LIBRARY

Math library (libm, -lm). so like, you gotta link that bad boy in or nothing happens, no cap 🔥

🌸 SYNOPSIS

#include <complex.h>

double cabs(double complex z);
float cabsf(float complex z);
long double cabsl(long double complex z);

three sisters, three return types, one vibe 💅

💜 DESCRIPTION

These functions return the absolute value of the complex number z. The result is a real number.

like… you feed it a complex number and it hands you back a plain real one. glow-up moment 🦋

🎀 ATTRIBUTES

okay so for the whole explanation of what these terms even mean, go peek at attributes(7). putting the table here as bullets because we're cute like that:

• Interface: cabs(), cabsf(), cabsl()
• Attribute: Thread safety
• Value: MT-Safe

translation: thread-safe besties, you're free to run wild, periodt 👑

⭐ STANDARDS

C11, POSIX.1-2008. certified, standards-approved, no notes 😌

🌈 HISTORY

glibc 2.1. C99, POSIX.1-2001.

so she's been around a minute. a legend from day one fr fr 👑

🧚 NOTES

The function is actually an alias for hypot(a, b) (or, equivalently, sqrt(a*a + b*b)).

not me finding out cabs is literally just hypot in a trench coat 💀 keep that in your pocket, it's giving iykyk

🍓 SEE ALSO

• abs(3)
• cimag(3)
• hypot(3)
• complex(7)

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and that's the whole page bestie, literally ate and left no crumbs 💅

this was Linux man-pages 6.20, dated 2026-02-08 — catch you in the group chat, mwah 🫶✨