Speaker
W. LAVRIJSEN
(LBNL)
Description
Python is a flexible, powerful, high-level language with excellent
interactive and introspective capabilities and a very clean syntax. As
such it can be a very effective tool for driving physics analysis.
Python is designed to be extensible in low-level C-like languages, and
its use as a scientific steering language has become quite widespread.
To this end, existing and custom-written C or C++ libraries are bound
to the Python environment as so-called extension modules. A number of
tools for easing the process of creating such bindings exist, such as
SWIG or Boost.Python. Yet, the the process still requires a
considerable amount of effort and expertise.
The C++ language has little built-in introspective capabilities, but
tools such as LCGDict and CINT add this by providing so-called
dictionaries: libraries that contain information about the names,
entry points, argument types, etc. of other libraries.
The reflection information from these dictionaries can be used for the
creation of bindings and so the process can be fully automated, as
dictionaries are already provided for many end-user libraries for
other purposes, such as object persistency.
PyLCGDict is a Python extension module that uses LCG dictionaries, as
PyROOT uses CINT reflection information, to allow Python users to
access C++ libraries with essentially no preparation on the users'
behalf. In addition, and in a similar way, PyROOT gives ROOT users
access to Python libraries.
