C99 has a builtin complex type. "double complex" (similar to "unsigned int"). Of course all arithmetic operators are defined for that type. Example: http://col

C99 has a builtin complex type. "double complex" (similar to "unsigned int"). Of course all arithmetic operators are defined for that type. Example: http://coliru.stacked-crooked.com/view?id=0d295064bd367eca http://coliru.stacked-crooked.com/view?id=0d295064bd367eca Source: http://en.cppreference.com/w/c/numeric/complex http://en.cppreference.com/w/c/numeric/complex Have you tried that? Of course Microsoft refuses to implement C99, so you could only try it on non-Microsoft C implementations.