[PYTHON MATRIX-SIG] HDF

[Paul F. Dubois]

We have a basic interface to the PDB file format. This is a format that is
part of the PACT system developed by Stuart Brown of LLNL. This interface
will be released within the next two weeks; we in fact were just doing the
paperwork yesterday. Unfortunately, we have not done an interface to HDF as
we do not use it. 

See coral.llnl.gov/pub/users/pact to get PACT. It is free. PDB is a portable,
self-defining file. It is significantly fast. It allows "directories" inside
the file and can store entire pointered C structures in a
morphology-preserving way. There is both a C and Fortran interface, and a
nice document (which you have to get separately from the same site). It has
had extensive use at LLNL for many years.

See S. A. Brown et. al, "Software for Portable Scientific Data Management",
Computers in Physics 7(3), p 304 (1993) for an article comparing HDF, netCDF,
and PDB, written by people connected with each project.

See S.A. Brown, P. F. Dubois, and D. H. Munro, "Creating and Using PDB
Files", Computers in Physics 9(2), p 173 (1995) for a tutorial.

Our Python interface uses the Numerical Python package to turn data in the
files into NumPy arrays. The interface should be considered a beta when we
release it. It will be part of an "LLNL" release which will help people
create python with NumPy, Gist, PDB, Tk, and C++ support. (The C++ support is
not even an alpha, but there is at least an option in configure to use a C++
main program and add modules written in C++).

Our work has gone more slowly than we had hoped due to an oversubscribed work
force, but it is coming along. Please be patient.

Paul Dubois
Project Leader, Computer Science
X-Division, LLNL

----------
From: Daniel.Michelson <Daniel.Michelson@smhi.se>
To: matrix-sig@python.org
Subject: [PYTHON MATRIX-SIG] HDF
Date: Tuesday, June 03, 1997 6:37 AM

Greetings!

I have a vague recollection of someone mentioning that the LLNL was working 
on a Python interface to the HDF library. Am I right? If so, what shape is 
it in and is it targeted for public release?

curiously, -daniel

+------------------+--------------------------------------------------+
|                  | Daniel B. Michelson                              |
| /\ |\  /| |  | | | Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute|
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|  \ |    | |  | | | Telephone: +46 11 - 15 84 94                     |
| \/ |    | |  | | | Telefax:   +46 11 - 17 02 07                     |
|                  | Internet:  Daniel.Michelson@smhi.se              |
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MATRIX-SIG  - SIG on Matrix Math for Python

send messages to: matrix-sig@python.org
administrivia to: matrix-sig-request@python.org
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