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Perl Data Language 2.4.10 released

Posted by samzenpus on from the check-it-out dept.

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."

14 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Quiz by fph+il+quozientatore · · Score: 5, Funny

    Fill in the missing word.
    PDL: the computational power of Matlab, octave, IDL and NumPy with the __________ of Perl!

    --
    My first program:

    Hell Segmentation fault

    1. Re:Quiz by SJHillman · · Score: 3, Funny

      flying purple unicorns

    2. Re:Quiz by mitashki · · Score: 3, Insightful

      LAZYNESS the missing word

      --
      "When all you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail."
    3. Re:Quiz by jonnat · · Score: 3

      That's a very Perl-like quiz as many different and apparently completely unrelated statements would fit the answer, possibly all conceivable statements, in fact.

    4. Re:Quiz by oneiros27 · · 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), 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.

      --
      Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
  2. Re:first post? by xTantrum · · Score: 4, Informative

    No Perl is. Real scientist use the Python programming language with Numpy and MatPlotLib :D

    --
    $action = empty(PHP) ? backToC() : unset(PHP) ; "when the concrete cases are understood, the abstractions are readily
  3. Why PDL? by tonique · · Score: 5, Informative

    Obviously, I forgot to include a link to the the actual PDL site. 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...

  4. Re:Perl I love you by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 4, Funny

    Thanks for the heads up. I was thinking of buying one of those discounted Windows 7 phones to run my PDL plasma confinement simulations for my tokamak, but it looks like that won't work out. I guess I'll look into an Anroid-based solution instead.

  5. Re:Perl I love you by sg_oneill · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh Perl, what CAN'T you do?!

    Stay relevant.

    --
    Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
  6. Re:first post? by iamgnat · · Score: 3, Insightful

    eh. find replace "\t" with " " ? just a thought.

    Works great until you inherit code from some moron that used tabs in some places and 8 spaces in others (including alternating between lines right next to each other), then it makes your life hell sorting it all out. Matters get further complicated when your editor has a different setting of tabs than someone else on the same project.

    Using tabs for whitespace in code is the work of an angry little daemon, but writing a language that is dependent on whitespace (and accepts tabs) when "proper" white spacing has been a religious war for decades prior to the birth of said language is the work of pure evil that makes Satan himself cringe.

  7. Re:first post? by tuffy · · Score: 3, Informative

    % pep8 file.py

    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.

    --

    Ita erat quando hic adveni.

  8. IAMA PDL user by omission9 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I was happy to be reading /. on my lunch break and see PDL mentioned. I use PDL and am glad to see it get some notice.
    I am disappointment in the comments so far though. The anti-Perl froth is strong in this thread and I am not sure why?
    Here is my point of view:
            -Use whatever programming language suits you and your task the best. Maximize for total productivity which is a function of both of these things in varying degrees.
            -Perl suits me best, personally, as a comfortable tool This is kind of squishy...it just feels right to me. MANY MANY people agree with me. But maybe you don't. meh.
            -My tasks involve (a) parsing data from a variety of sources and (b) number crunching. Perl is already fantastic at (a). PDL makes Perl fantastic at (b).
            -The people behind PDL use it for even more numerically complex tasks than I. Check out the docs and mailing lost archives and see. http://pdl.perl.org/?page=mailing-lists
            -If you are already writing code in C, Python, Fortran or whatever else than you should stick with it. Moving over to PDL just because it exists doesn't make any sense, of course.
    Now, as a Perl and PDL user could someone please explain to me the string visceral reaction shown by people in these comment threads whenever it is mentioned? Did Larry Wall challenge you to a bar fight once or something? (Probably not, I met him once and he doesn't seem like a bar fight kind of guy.)

    1. Re:IAMA PDL user by ThePhilips · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It is more like: Some people lack the ability to write clean Perl code, and fear the clean code as it might make look the job too easy.

      Perl is indiscriminate at making things easy, even if that is writing crappy code.

      Unreadable Perl code isn't the problem of the language, it is the problem of the developers. Trying to fixing it at the language level is wrong and redundant, because in the end it would become Visual Basic or Java or Python. And we already have them.

      --
      All hope abandon ye who enter here.
  9. Re:first post? by Dog-Cow · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Using characters that are, by definition, not supposed to be displayed, is the single most stupid decision ever made in programming languages.