Pyrex is a
programming language
A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language.
The description of a programming ...
for creating
Python modules
Broadly speaking, modularity is the degree to which a system's components may be separated and recombined, often with the benefit of flexibility and variety in use. The concept of modularity is used primarily to reduce complexity by breaking a s ...
. Its syntax is very close to Python and it makes it easy for Python programmers to write non-Python supporting code for interfacing modules in a language which is as close to Python as possible.
Python itself only provides a
C API to write extension modules, which allows writing of
functions and
datatype
In computer science and computer programming, a data type (or simply type) is a set of possible values and a set of allowed operations on it. A data type tells the compiler or interpreter how the programmer intends to use the data. Most progra ...
s in C. These can then be accessed from Python. It is possible to wrap the functions and datatypes of existing C
libraries
A library is a collection of Document, materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or electronic media, digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a ...
as Python objects and therefore make them available to Python.
Pyrex allows the user to write extension modules in a Python-like language which may directly access the external C code. The similarity of Pyrex's syntax to Python's makes it easy to write Python modules, but there are some functional limitations. The programmer must specify the name of C-header files,
enumeration
An enumeration is a complete, ordered listing of all the items in a collection. The term is commonly used in mathematics and computer science to refer to a listing of all of the elements of a set. The precise requirements for an enumeration (fo ...
s, datatypes and functions needing to be accessed in the module, then they can be used as if they were Python objects. The Pyrex compiler will generate the necessary glue code automatically and compile the Pyrex code into a working Python module.
There are tools like
SWIG
The Simplified Wrapper and Interface Generator (SWIG) is an open-source software tool used to connect computer programs or libraries written in C or C++ with scripting languages such as Lua, Perl, PHP, Python, R, Ruby, Tcl, and other la ...
or Python's foreign function library ''ctypes'' which can be used for this task without requiring much additional code, but this is limited to making an external library available in Python code.
If adjustments to the API are needed, glue code must again be written manually.
See also
*
Cython
Cython () is a programming language that aims to be a superset of the Python programming language, designed to give C-like performance with code that is written mostly in Python with optional additional C-inspired syntax.
Cython is a compiled ...
References
External links
*
{{Compu-prog-stub
Free compilers and interpreters
Python (programming language)