Script Languages in Science CCOM Student Seminar Series Kurt Schwehr 12-Nov-2008

Scripting Languages

bash Comes with Linux and Mac Windows can get it via “cygwin” Good to use as “glue” to hold it all together Automate common tasks

Full power of the Unix command line

Why python? Support on many operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux) More fun to program Promotes readable code Many support libraries (modules) including databases, plotting, geospatial, scientific processing Used by Arc/GIS No licenses required / free / open-source Useful for almost all application types “Easy” access to C and C++ libraries

Getting Python Windows – enthought, cygwin, or python.org Mac – built in, fink/macports, or python.org Linux – built in or python.org

Python Books A Byte of Python - Text Processing in Python - Thinking In Python -

If there is interest, I can teach an in-depth python short course

Python.org and Pypi

Reading a file

How did I collect this data? pyserial!

Parsing the lines

matplotlib

Histograms

projections

ipython

Databases

Using libraries in other languages Almost anything written in C, C++ or Fortran can be used in Python There are many ways to accomplish this: – SWIG – SIP – PyInline – CPython – Ctypes – Boost Python – …

Thanks for listening!