Christopher Barker wrote:
Sturla Molden wrote:
It is also easier to write C or Fortran extensions for Matlab than for Python.
Really? I"m not so sure about that -- I found mex file writing pretty painful.
With weave, boost, pyrex, swig, f2py, etc, the hardest thing about writing extensions for Python is choosing which tool to use!
I agree with Sturla here, up until Pyrex. Looking at the Python API, swig, f2py, etc. I found mex files far more straightforward. Mostly this is because of the (mostly) single datatype in Matlab: the double matrix. Having to do reference counting in the Python API is a drag. Now, with Pyrex, that's a different matter entirely. Pyrex makes extension writing so incredibly easy, its one of the major reasons I switched from Matlab to Python. I'm trying to convince some people at work to explore Python as a Matlab replacement. If all you do is numerics, then Matlab is easier (by a little). Once you go beyond numerics (which you do for any real project), like reading datafiles, interfacing with the Internet, accessing databases, etc... suddenly Python is a *lot* nicer. bb -- ----------------- bblais@bryant.edu http://web.bryant.edu/~bblais