How do you do exponentiation in C?

use the pow function (it takes floats/doubles though).

man pow:

   #include <math.h>

   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.

To add to what Evan said: C does not have a built-in operator for exponentiation, because it is not a primitive operation for most CPUs. Thus, it's implemented as a library function.

Also, for computing the function e^x, you can use the exp(double), expf(float), and expl(long double) functions.

Note that you do not want to use the ^ operator, which is the bitwise exclusive OR operator.