The GNU Data Language (GDL) is a free alternative to IDL (Interactive Data Language), achieving full compatibility with IDL 7 and partial compatibility with IDL 8.http://aramis.obspm.fr/~coulais/IDL_et_GDL/Adass2011/O11_ADASS2011_GDL_Coulais.pdf Together with its library routines, GDL is developed to serve as a tool for data analysis and visualization in such disciplines as astronomy, geosciences, and medical imaging. GDL is licensed under the

GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general us ...

. Other open-source numerical data analysis tools similar to GDL include

Julia Julia is usually a feminine given name. It is a Latinate feminine form of the name Julio and Julius. (For further details on etymology, see the Wiktionary entry "Julius".) The given name ''Julia'' had been in use throughout Late Antiquity (e ...

, Jupyter Notebook,

GNU Octave GNU Octave is a high-level programming language primarily intended for scientific computing and numerical computation. Octave helps in solving linear and nonlinear problems numerically, and for performing other numerical experiments using a lang ...

, NCAR Command Language (NCL),

Perl Data Language Perl Data Language (abbreviated PDL) is a set of free software array programming extensions to the Perl programming language. PDL extends the data structures built into Perl, to include large multidimensional arrays, and adds functionality to m ...

(PDL), R,

Scilab Scilab is a free and open-source, cross-platform numerical computational package and a high-level, numerically oriented programming language. It can be used for signal processing, statistical analysis, image enhancement, fluid dynamics simula ...

, SciPy, and

Yorick Yorick is a character in William Shakespeare's play ''Hamlet''. He is the dead court jester whose skull is exhumed by the First Gravedigger in Act 5, Scene 1, of the play. The sight of Yorick's skull evokes a reminiscence by Prince Hamlet of th ...

. GDL as a language is dynamically-typed, vectorized, and has object-oriented programming capabilities. GDL library routines handle numerical calculations (e.g. FFT), data visualisation, signal/image processing, interaction with host OS, and data input/output. GDL supports several data formats, such as

NetCDF NetCDF (Network Common Data Form) is a set of software libraries and self-describing, machine-independent data formats that support the creation, access, and sharing of array-oriented scientific data. The project homepage is hosted by the Unidata ...

, HDF (v4 & v5),

GRIB GRIB (GRIdded Binary or General Regularly-distributed Information in Binary form) is a concise data format commonly used in meteorology to store historical and forecast weather data. It is standardized by the World Meteorological Organization's C ...

, PNG,

TIFF Tag Image File Format, abbreviated TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is widely supported by scanning, faxing, word processin ...

, and

DICOM Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) is the standard for the communication and management of medical imaging information and related data. DICOM is most commonly used for storing and transmitting medical images enabling the integ ...

. Graphical output is handled by X11,

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, ...

SVG Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML-based vector image format for defining two-dimensional graphics, having support for interactivity and animation. The SVG specification is an open standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium sinc ...

, or z-buffer terminals, the last one allowing output graphics (plots) to be saved in raster graphics formats. GDL features integrated debugging facilities, such as

breakpoint In software development, a breakpoint is an intentional stopping or pausing place in a program, put in place for debugging purposes. It is also sometimes simply referred to as a pause. More generally, a breakpoint is a means of acquiring knowl ...

s. GDL has a Python bridge (Python code can be called from GDL; GDL can be compiled as a Python module). GDL uses

Eigen (C++ library) Eigen may refer to: * Eigen (C++ library), computer programming library for matrix and linear algebra operations * Eigen Technologies, the Document AI software company * Eigen, Schwyz, settlement in the municipality of Alpthal in the canton of S ...

numerical library (similar to Intel MKL) to offer high computing performance on multi-core processors. Packaged versions of GDL are available for several

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

and

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Be ...

flavours as well as

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

. The source code compiles on Microsoft Windows and other

UNIX Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

systems, including Solaris. GDL is not an official GNU package.

References

External links

*
Running the GNU Data Language on coLinux
* * Linux packages
ArchLinuxDebianFedoraGentooUbuntu
* BSD/OSX ports
FinkFreeBSDMacports
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gnu Data Language Free science software Free software programmed in C++ Data language Numerical programming languages Software that uses wxWidgets

See also

References

External links