The periodic function COS returns the trigonometric cosine of X.
Result = COS(X)
Returns the trigonometric cosine of X.
The angle for which the cosine is desired, specified in radians. If X is double-precision floating or complex, the result is of the same type. All other types are converted to single-precision floating-point and yield floating-point results. When applied to complex numbers:
COS(x) = (EXP(i*x) + 1/EXP(i*x))/2
where i is defined as COMPLEX(0, 1).
If X is an array, the result has the same structure, with each element containing the cosine of the corresponding element of X.
This routine is written to make use of IDL's thread pool, which can increase execution speed on systems with multiple CPUs. The values stored in the
Find the cosine of 0.5 radians and print the result by entering:
PRINT, COS(.5)
IDL prints:
0.877583
Introduced: Original