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<div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both">
<a name="math_toolkit.intro_pol_overview"></a><a class="link" href="intro_pol_overview.html" title="Policies">Policies</a>
</h2></div></div></div>
<p>
      Policies are a powerful fine-grain mechanism that allow you to customise the
      behaviour of this library according to your needs. There is more information
      available in the <a class="link" href="pol_tutorial.html" title="Policy Tutorial">policy tutorial</a>
      and the <a class="link" href="pol_ref.html" title="Policy Reference">policy reference</a>.
    </p>
<p>
      Generally speaking, unless you find that the <a class="link" href="pol_tutorial/policy_tut_defaults.html" title="Policies Have Sensible Defaults">default
      policy behaviour</a> when encountering 'bad' argument values does not meet
      your needs, you should not need to worry about policies.
    </p>
<p>
      Policies are a compile-time mechanism that allow you to change error-handling
      or calculation precision either program wide, or at the call site.
    </p>
<p>
      Although the policy mechanism itself is rather complicated, in practice it
      is easy to use, and very flexible.
    </p>
<p>
      Using policies you can control:
    </p>
<div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; ">
<li class="listitem">
          <a class="link" href="pol_ref/error_handling_policies.html" title="Error Handling Policies">How results
          from 'bad' arguments are handled</a>, including those that cannot be
          fully evaluated.
        </li>
<li class="listitem">
          How <a class="link" href="pol_ref/internal_promotion.html" title="Internal Floating-point Promotion Policies">accuracy is
          controlled by internal promotion</a> to use more precise types.
        </li>
<li class="listitem">
          What working <a class="link" href="pol_ref/precision_pol.html" title="Precision Policies">precision</a>
          should be used to calculate results.
        </li>
<li class="listitem">
          What to do when a <a class="link" href="pol_ref/assert_undefined.html" title="Mathematically Undefined Function Policies">mathematically
          undefined function</a> is used: Should this raise a run-time or compile-time
          error?
        </li>
<li class="listitem">
          Whether <a class="link" href="pol_ref/discrete_quant_ref.html" title="Discrete Quantile Policies">discrete
          functions</a>, like the binomial, should return real or only integral
          values, and how they are rounded.
        </li>
<li class="listitem">
          How many iterations a special function is permitted to perform in a series
          evaluation or root finding algorithm before it gives up and raises an
          <a class="link" href="error_handling.html#math_toolkit.error_handling.evaluation_error">evaluation_error</a>.
        </li>
</ul></div>
<p>
      You can control policies:
    </p>
<div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; ">
<li class="listitem">
          Using <a class="link" href="pol_ref/policy_defaults.html" title="Using Macros to Change the Policy Defaults">macros</a>
          to change any default policy: the is the preferred method for installation
          wide policies.
        </li>
<li class="listitem">
          At your chosen <a class="link" href="pol_ref/namespace_pol.html" title="Setting Polices at Namespace Scope">namespace
          scope</a> for distributions and/or functions: this is the preferred
          method for project, namespace, or translation unit scope policies.
        </li>
<li class="listitem">
          In an ad-hoc manner <a class="link" href="pol_tutorial/ad_hoc_sf_policies.html" title="Changing the Policy on an Ad Hoc Basis for the Special Functions">by
          passing a specific policy to a special function</a>, or to a <a class="link" href="pol_tutorial/ad_hoc_dist_policies.html" title="Setting Policies for Distributions on an Ad Hoc Basis">statistical
          distribution</a>.
        </li>
</ul></div>
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      Walker and Xiaogang Zhang<p>
        Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying
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