Documentation of pow is incorrect regarding **

[RunDevelopment]

Documentation

The documentation of the pow function currently states:

The two-argument form pow(base, exp) is equivalent to using the power operator: base**exp.

This is incorrect for negative base with exponents between 0 and 1 (both exclusive). E.g.:

>>> pow(-9, 0.5)
(1.8369701987210297e-16+3j)
>>> -9 ** 0.5
-3.0

(Tested for Python 3.8.2 and 3.10.6.)

While pow returns a complex value, ** simply returns the negative square root of the absolute value of base.

Note that this is only the difference in behavior that I observed so far. Issue #60200 suggests there might be more.

[Eclips4]

Hello!
There's no bug. ** has a higher precedence than the negation operator -.
So, your expression calculates as -(9 ** 0.5).
FYI: https://docs.python.org/3/reference/expressions.html#operator-precedence

[RunDevelopment]

I see. Thank you!

Maybe in Python 4, this could be invalid syntax to protect against this footgun. I mean, JS made this invalid syntax.

> -9 ** 0.5
-9 ** 0.5
^^^^^

SyntaxError: Unary operator used immediately before exponentiation expression. Parenthesis must be used to disambiguate operator precedence