[Numpy-discussion] Can this function by Numpy-ized?

[John J. Lee]

On Sun, 26 Aug 2001, Rob wrote:

> I finally got my FEM EM code working.  I profiled it and this function
> uses up a big hunk of time.  It performs gaussian integration over a
> triangle.  I am trying to figure out how to slice the arrays so as to
> push it down into the C level.  Does anyone have any ideas?  Thanks,
> Rob.
>
> ps. it looks to be intractible to me.  Maybe I need to look at writing a
> C extension.  I've never done that before.
[...]

I'm not a good enough ufunc / array function hacker to come up with
anything, but I doubt it, and I wonder how much time it would save anyway,
given the size of the arrays involved.  From the look of your comments
before the function, it looks like a) you're a C programmer, not quite
comfortable with Python yet, or b) you wrote it in C first, then moved it
into Python.  If the latter, you might want to try wrapping that C
function with SWIG, though to be honest I'm not sure the overhead of
learning to use SWIG is any less than for writing a C extension manually
(but less error-prone I expect, and less work if you have a lot of C to
wrap).  I think the Scipy project has some typemaps for passing Numeric
arrays; if not, I've seen some collections of SWIG typemaps for Numeric
somewhere...

BTW, the best place to put those comments is in a docstring.  Here is a
slightly more Pythonically-formatted version (I must be bored today):

def ComputeGaussQuadPoint(QuadPoint, a):
    """Return coordinates of 7-point Gauss nodes of a triangular patch.

    QuadPoint: node index, from 0 to 6
    a: triangular patch?
    """
    SrcPointCol=zeros((3),Float)
    tn = a.TrngleNode  # the three nodes of the triangular patch
    SrcPointCol[0] = (a.Qpnt[QuadPoint,0]*a.NodeCord[tn[0],0] +
                      a.Qpnt[QuadPoint,1]*a.NodeCord[tn[1],0] +
                      a.Qpnt[QuadPoint,2]*a.NodeCord[tn[2],0])

    SrcPointCol[1] = (a.Qpnt[QuadPoint,0]*a.NodeCord[tn[0],1] +
                      a.Qpnt[QuadPoint,1]*a.NodeCord[tn[1],1] +
                      a.Qpnt[QuadPoint,2]*a.NodeCord[tn[2],1])

    SrcPointCol[2] = (a.Qpnt[QuadPoint,0]*a.NodeCord[tn[0],2] +
                      a.Qpnt[QuadPoint,1]*a.NodeCord[tn[1],2] +
                      a.Qpnt[QuadPoint,2]*a.NodeCord[tn[2],2])

    return SrcPointCol


John