Academic citation for Python

[David Eppstein]

In article <3CEEEE42.60D47318 at engcorp.com>,
 Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:

> > How should the Python language be cited in an academic publication?
> 
> Doesn't "to cite" mean simply to acknowledge a source of information?
> 
> I don't think you can "cite" a language.  Maybe specific facts about
> the language, drawn from the "literature" (e.g. www.python.org), but
> not "the language" itself.

I can't speak for the OP, but I can imagine situations in which I'm 
writing an academic paper, and want to use Python to describe an 
algorithm or something, but don't trust my audience to all know Python.  
So, I'd say that my algorithm was written in Python [1], where the 
numbered reference points to somewhere people could go to learn what 
Python is.  Is there a canonical source of information or should one 
just pick one of the intro to Python programming books?

-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/