Perl Data Language 2.4.10 released 94
First time accepted submitter tonique writes "Perl Data Language (PDL) 2.4.10 has been released. Highlights of the new release are automatic multi-thread support, support for data structures larger than 2 GB and POSIX threads support. Also available is the first draft of the new PDL book. PDL is especially suitable for scientists. For those not in the know, 'PDL gives standard Perl the ability to compactly store and speedily manipulate the large N-dimensional data arrays which are the bread and butter of scientific computing.' Commercial languages used for the same purpose include MATLAB and IDL."
Re:first post? (Score:4, Informative)
Why PDL? (Score:5, Informative)
Obviously, I forgot to include a link to the the actual PDL site [perl.org]. Sorry about that.
I'm personally using PDL in the context of environmental noise measurements; I get long series of numbers and need to sum (and handle them in other ways) efficiently. Why, then, PDL and not numPy or something else? It stems from the fact that I had used Perl for scripting and text handling earlier. Also, I wasn't required to use something else. So laziness is a rather strong reason. Perhaps I was also a lost cause (that's perhaps a wrong phrase?) because I had started with Perl already.
I'm a firm believer in "use a tool suitable for the purpose", so I use R for statistical things. I shudder at all the things Excel, a prime example of a tool exploitable for multiple purposes, is used by my co-workers...
Re:Quiz (Score:5, Informative)
user base.
Most of the scientific community knows at least a *little* bit of Perl ... they might not know all of the idiosyncrasies (eg, I've found more than a fair share of '{IDL,Fortran,C} written in Perl'), but it's far greater than those who know any Python.
We don't have that many Matlab users in our department, and no Octave users that I'm aware of ... most use IDL, but IDL has the problem that you can't freely distribute your code for others to use. (There's a free runtime, but it can't open or write external files, which isn't so useful for writing tools for others to use)
We do have a small handful of GDL users, and a growing number of NumPy users (via SunPuy [sunpy.org]), but the problem they're running into is trying to get the scientists to learn Python -- there's enough odd conventions that it's a fair bit of hand-holding initially.
Re:first post? (Score:3, Informative)
will tell you all the line numbers where someone's mixed tabs and spaces. Or use M-x whitespace-mode (or your editor's equivalent) and clean them up yourself in whatever consistent style you'd prefer.
Python's design has plenty of annoyances, but its whitespace-based syntax is the among least of them.