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### 4.2 Using Plans

Plans for all transform types in FFTW are stored as type `fftw_plan` (an opaque pointer type), and are created by one of the various planning routines described in the following sections. An `fftw_plan` contains all information necessary to compute the transform, including the pointers to the input and output arrays.

         void fftw_execute(const fftw_plan plan);

This executes the `plan`, to compute the corresponding transform on the arrays for which it was planned (which must still exist). The plan is not modified, and `fftw_execute` can be called as many times as desired.

To apply a given plan to a different array, you can use the guru interface. See Guru Interface.

`fftw_execute` (and equivalents) is the only function in FFTW guaranteed to be thread-safe; see Thread safety.

This function:

         void fftw_destroy_plan(fftw_plan plan);

deallocates the `plan` and all its associated data.

FFTW's planner saves some other persistent data, such as the accumulated wisdom and a list of algorithms available in the current configuration. If you want to deallocate all of that and reset FFTW to the pristine state it was in when you started your program, you can call:

         void fftw_cleanup(void);

After calling `fftw_cleanup`, all existing plans become undefined, and you should not attempt to execute them nor to destroy them. You can however create and execute/destroy new plans, in which case FFTW starts accumulating wisdom information again.

`fftw_cleanup` does not deallocate your plans; you should still call `fftw_destroy_plan` for this purpose.

The following two routines are provided purely for academic purposes (that is, for entertainment).

         void fftw_flops(const fftw_plan plan,
                         double *add, double *mul, double *fma);

Given a `plan`, set `add`, `mul`, and `fma` to an exact count of the number of floating-point additions, multiplications, and fused multiply-add operations involved in the plan's execution. The total number of floating-point operations (flops) is `add + mul + 2*fma`, or `add + mul + fma` if the hardware supports fused multiply-add instructions (although the number of FMA operations is only approximate because of compiler voodoo). (The number of operations should be an integer, but we use `double` to avoid overflowing `int` for large transforms; the arguments are of type `double` even for single and long-double precision versions of FFTW.)

         void fftw_fprint_plan(const fftw_plan plan, FILE *output_file);
         void fftw_print_plan(const fftw_plan plan);

This outputs a “nerd-readable” representation of the `plan` to the given file or to `stdout`, respectively.