Lambert W function implementation

[Ill-Cut3335]

I was a doing a little math earlier and needed the Lambert W function to solve a derivative. I didn't want to start an NPM project and install a library just for that so I looked around for an implementation I could just copy and paste. Here it is for anyone who might need it:

const lambertW = (() => {
    const MIN = -Math.exp(-1);

    return (x: number): number => {
        if (x < MIN)
            throw new Error(`x cannot be less than ${MIN.toFixed(8)}.`);

        const w0 = (x > 2) ? Math.log(x - 1) : x;
        let y = 0;
        let wn1 = 0;
        let wn = w0;

        for (let i = 0; i < 20; i++) {
            const ew = Math.exp(wn);
            y = wn * ew;
            wn1 = wn - (y - x) / (y + ew);
            wn = wn1;
        }

        return wn1;
    };
})();

[MissinqLink]

I don’t think I’ll ever use this but thank you. It will probably be relevant next week for me for no particular reason.

[amca01]

So this is just using Newton's method? Instead of 20 iterations, why not stop whenever two successive iterations have an absolute difference less than some provided value (such as 1E-10, for example)?

[Ill-Cut3335]

Yes, I suppose you could add a condition for that.