[Numpy-discussion] matlab -> python translation

[Stefan van der Walt]

Hi all,

I recently saw discussions on the list regarding Matlab/Octave to
Python translation.  I brought this under John Eaton's attention (he
is the original author of Octave) -- below is his response.

Regards
Stéfan

----- Forwarded message from "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo.che.wisc.edu> -----

From: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo.che.wisc.edu>

On 21-Jun-2006, Stefan van der Walt wrote:

| I'd like to bring this thread under your attention, in case you want
| to comment:
| 
| http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/numpy-discussion/3174978

Would you please pass along the following comments?


Translating the syntax might not be too hard, but to have a really
effective tool, you have to get all the details of the Matlab/Octave
function calls the same as well.  So would you do that by linking to
Octave's run-time libraries as well?  That could pobably be made to
work, but it would probably drag in a lot more code that some poeple
would expect when they just want to translate and run a relatively
small number of lines of Matlab code.

Another semantic detail that would likely cause trouble is the
(apparent) pass-by-value semantics of Matlab.  How would you reconcile
this with the mutable types of Python?

Finally, I would encourage anyone who wants to work on a Matlab/Octave
to Python translator using Octave's parser and run-time libraries to
work on this in a way that can be integrated with Octave.  Please
consider discuss your ideas about this project on the
maintainers at octave.org mailing list.


Thanks,

jwe

----- End forwarded message -----