python newbie

[Jim Gibson]

In article <fa433710-0953-4b4a-96f6-2f7d1b9affb3 at googlegroups.com>,
Maura E Monville <maura.monville at gmail.com> wrote:

> My supervisor has palmed me off with a python code, written by a
> collaborator, which implements an algorithm aimed at denoising the dose
> distribution (energy per unit mass) output from a radiation transport Monte
> Carlo code.
> My task is to translate the python code into a MatLab code.

Interestingly, I was recently given the task of translating a Matlab
program into Python. Just the opposite of your problem. And I knew
neither!

> A colleague of mine and I stared at the python code for a while without
> understanding the logic. 
> To me that code looks like Chinese or Arabian.
> I don't have clear ideas about the syntax and python variables. For instance,
> in MatLab there is the cell array storage type to host data of different
> type. I have no idea how a 3D matrix can be loaded through python.

Does the Python program use scipy and numpy modules? Those, in my short
experience, provide the closest equivalent to Matlab matrices and
functions. They allowed me to do almost a line-by-line translation of
Matlab code into Python. The h5py module allows you to read and write
Matlab "save" files in Python, too.

Some of the differences between Matlab and Python:

1. Matlab array indexing starts at 1; Python starts at 0.
2. Matlab uses parentheses () for sequence indexing; Python uses
brackets [].
3. Matlab arrays are column-major order; Numpy arrays are row-major
order,

Post Python code here or provide a link to code posted elsewhere for
additional help.

Good luck.

-- 
Jim Gibson