A lot of these are (as drallison mentioned) either syntactic sugar or 'missing the point of C.' The author would like an exponent operator but this is something

A lot of these are (as drallison mentioned) either syntactic sugar or 'missing the point of C.' The author would like an exponent operator but this is something complex enough to require a true library function. Almost every C operator can be implemented in a handful of opcodes -- add, subtract, function call and memory dereference. Why include such an expensive function as a core operator instead of the library?