After Effects distance between two points I have written an expression to get the distance between two points, but it does not work and I haven't a clue why. It's pretty simple:

function findDistance(xa, xb, ya, yb)
{
    return Math.sqrt( (xa - xb)^2 + (ya - yb)^2 );
}
findDistance(682, 617, 310, 342);


The error I get is, "Error at line 0... invalid numeric result (divide by zero?)."

I am so confused by this. It seems so straight forward, so I am not even sure what to ask. Can anyone see what is wrong with this?



EDIT: I am trying to narrow down the issue. Even using the following expression is not working:

Math.sqrt( (682-617)^2 + (310-342)^2 );


Narrowing down further, this finally worked:

Math.sqrt( 5249 );


I also isolated and confirmed that X^2 is the correct way to square something, so what gives?
Hate to spoil all your good work, but it's a lot easier to use the built-in length() function:

length(pointa, pointb)


e.g. 

length(thisComp.layer(1).position, thisComp.layer(2).position)


or

length([682, 617], [310, 342]); //raw vector values as an array
length(thisComp.layer("foo").anchorPoint, [310, 342]); //a spatial property and an array
length([123,456,789], [10,9,8]); //works in 3D too. 


It's in vector math in the expressions drop-down panel.