Python Scripting for Computational Science

Hans Petter Langtangen (eds.)3540739157, 978-3-540-73915-9

Numerous readers of the second edition have noti?ed me about misprints and possible improvements of the text and the associated computer codes. The resulting modi?cations have been incorporated in this new edition and its accompanying software. The major change between the second and third editions, however, is caused by the new implementation of Numerical Python, now called numpy. The new numpy package encourages a slightly di?erent syntax compared to the old Numeric implementation, which was used in the previous editions. Since Numerical Python functionality appears in a lot of places in the book, there are hence a huge number of updates to the new suggested numpy syntax, especially in Chapters 4, 9, and 10. The second edition was based on Python version 2.3, while the third edition contains updates for version 2.5. Recent Python features, such as generator expressions (Chapter 8.9.4), Ctypes for interfacing shared libraries in C (Chapter 5.2.2), the with statement (Chapter 3.1.4), and the subprocess module for running external processes (Chapter 3.1.3) have been exempli?ed to make the reader aware of new tools. Chapter 4.4.4 is new and gives a taste of symbolic mathematics in Python.

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Table of contents :
Front Matter….Pages I-XXVI
Introduction….Pages 1-25
Getting Started with Python Scripting….Pages 27-72
Basic Python….Pages 73-130
Numerical Computing in Python….Pages 131-188
Combining Python with Fortran, C, and C++….Pages 189-226
Introduction to GUI Programming….Pages 227-294
Web Interfaces and CGI Programming….Pages 295-318
Advanced Python….Pages 319-449
Fortran Programming with NumPy Arrays….Pages 451-482
C and C++ Programming with NumPy Arrays….Pages 483-528
More Advanced GUI Programming….Pages 529-603
Tools and Examples….Pages 605-676
Back Matter….Pages 677-756