[PYTHON MATRIX-SIG] Naming Conventions And Practical Experience

[Konrad HINSEN]

   BTW: what about work on standard packages?; I'd very much like some
   linear algebra stuff, for example to invert matrices (but don't know
   enough about it to contribute).  In addition, I'd would like to use

I agree that this would be useful, both directly and indirectly by
providing a real-life example of a C or Fortran extension.

Such extensions should also be considered in the big naming debate.  A
"everything in methods" strategy won't work, because a module can't
define methods for objects implemented in another module. So all
linear-algebra (or other application-specific) operations have to be
implemented as functions. This suggests that built-in functions of the
array module should also be functions unless there is some clear
semantic difference.


A difficult decision for linear algebra is which library to use. My
experience is limited to Fortran libraries, of which I had the best
results with LAPACK. There is a C version of LAPACK, which however I
have never used. There are also a couple of LA libraries directly
designed for C, rather than being translations from Fortran.

It would certainly be easiest to use a C library, which eliminates all
the Fortran interfacing machine dependencies and doesn't force users
to have a Fortran compiler. On the other hand, Fortran libraries are
better tested and on some systems (such as SGI) the performance
difference is enormous.

Any comments? Does anyone have experience with a C library for linear
algebra?

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Konrad Hinsen                     | E-Mail: hinsenk@ere.umontreal.ca
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