For instance, in MATLAB I might use lsqnonlin which implements the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm.
I found this reference which seems to be useful place to start, but is there also a systematic way to find relevant libraries for Fortran? I know IMSL is a well-known one, but is the general body of Fortran libraries not free as they are for Python or R?
What you found is probably the best list and is unusual in listing the licenses. There are also many specialized programs/libraries out there that can be difficult to find. Many of the libraries were written before people were sensitive to licensing and the licensing terms aren't as clearly stated as today. Many were government sponsored, making them public domain, though this isn't clearly stated. If you are making a commercial product the legal issues need to be considered. I frequently check http://people.sc.fsu.edu/~jburkardt/f_src/slatec/slatec.html (on the list you found) because the routines have been brought up to Fortran 90. I also use the GNU Scientific Library via the ISO C Binding. This library is comprehensive and GPL licensed. A Fortran interface library for that purpose is available at http://www.lrz.de/services/software/mathematik/gsl/fortran/.
Related
For our current project, we are thinking to use Boost framework.
However, the project should be truly cross-platform and might be shipped to some exotic platforms. Therefore, we would like to use only Boost packages (libraries) that does not contain any platform specific code: pure C++ and that's all.
Boost has the idea of header-only packages (libraries).
Can one assume that these packages (libraries) are free from platform specific code?
In case if not, is there a way to identify these kind of packages of Boost?
All C++ code is platform-specific to some extent. On the one side, there is this ideal concept of "pure standard C++ code", and on the other side, there is reality. Most of the Boost libraries are designed to maintain the ideal situation on the user-side, meaning that you, as the user of Boost, can write platform-agnostic standard C++ code, while all the underlying platform-specific code is hidden away in the guts of those Boost libraries (for those that need them).
But at the core of this issue is the problem of how to define platform-specific code versus standard C++ code in the real world. You can, of course, look at the standard document and say that anything outside of it is platform-specific, but that's nothing more than an academic discussion.
If we start from this scenario: assume we have a platform that only has a C++ compiler and a C++ standard library implementation, and no other OS or OS-specific API to rely on for other things that aren't covered by the standard library. Well, at that point, you still have to ask yourself:
What compiler is this? What version?
Is the standard library implementation correct? Bug-free?
Are those two entirely standard-compliant?
As far as I know, there is essentially no universal answer to this and there are no realistic guarantees. Most exotic platforms rely on exotic (or old) compilers with partial or non-compliant standard library implementations, and sometimes have self-imposed restrictions (e.g., no exceptions, no RTTI, etc.). An enormous amount of "pure standard C++ code" would never compile on these platforms.
Then, there is also the reality that most platforms today, even really small embedded systems have an operating system. The vast majority of them are POSIX compliant to some level (except for Windows, but Windows doesn't support any exotic platform anyways). So, in effect, platform-specific code that relies on POSIX functions is not really that bad since it is likely that most exotic platforms have them, for the most part.
I guess what I'm really getting at here is that this pure dividing line that you have in your mind about "pure C++" versus platform-specific code is really just an imaginary one. Every platform (compiler + std-lib + OS + ext-libs) lies somewhere along a continuum of level of support for standard language features, standard library features, OS API functions, and so on. And by that measure, all C++ code is platform-specific.
The only real question is how wide of a net it casts. For example, most Boost libraries (except for recent "flimsy" ones) generally support compilers down to a reasonable level of C++98 support, and many even try to support as far back as early 90s compilers and std-libs.
To know if a library, part of Boost or not, has wide enough support for your intended applications or platforms, you have the define the boundaries of that support. Just saying "pure C++" is not enough, it means nothing in the real world. You cannot say that you will be using C++11 compilers just after you've taken Boost.Thread as an example of a library with platform-specific code. Many C++11 implementations have very flimsy support for std::thread, but others do better, and that issue is as much of a "platform-specific" issue as using Boost.Thread will ever be.
The only real way to ever be sure about your platform support envelope is to actual set up machines (e.g., virtual machines, emulators, or real hardware) that will provide representative worst-cases. You have to select those worst-case machines based on a realistic assessment of what your clients may be using, and you have to keep that assessment up to date. You can create a regression test suite for your particular project, that uses the particular (Boost) libraries, and test that suite on all your worst-case test environments. Whatever doesn't pass the test, doesn't pass the test, it's that simple. And yes, you might find out in the future that some Boost library won't work under some new exotic platform, and if that happens you need to either get the Boost dev-team to add code to support it, or you have to re-write your code to get around it, but that's what software maintenance is all about, and it's a cost you have to anticipate, and such problems will come not only from Boost, but from the OS and from the compiler vendors too! At least, with Boost, you can fix the code yourself and contribute it to Boost, which you can't always do with OS or compiler vendors.
We had "Boost or not" discussion too. We decided not to use it.
We had some untypical hardware platforms to serve with one source code. Especially running boost on AVR was simply impossible because RTTI and exceptions, which Boost requires for a lot of things, aren't available.
There are parts of boost which use compiler specific "hacks" to e.g. get information about class structure.
We tried splitting the packages, but the inter dependency is quite high (at least 3 or 4 years ago).
In the meantime, C++11 was underway and GCC started supporting more and more. With that many reasons to use from boost faded (Which Boost features overlap with C++11?). We implemented the rest of our needs from scratch (with relative low effort thanks to variadic templates and other TMP features in C++11).
After a steep learning curve we have all we need without external libraries.
At the same time we have pondered the future of Boost. We expected the newly standardized C++11 features would be removed from boost. I don't know the current roadmap for Boost, but at the time our uncertainty made us vote against Boost.
This is not a real answer to your question, but it may help you decide whether to use Boost. (And sorry, it was to large for a comment)
I need to build a standalone Windows-based software, using the Fortran and or C/C ++. I expect users to download the program, install it and use it generically in a Windows environment.
Main aim of the software is to perform complex nonlinear optimization, and possibly constrained optimization. I expect users to interact with the program using a highly interactive graphics user interface. Practically, depicting results user high-end graphics is a necessity.
I want to know whether it is possible to achieve these using freely available libraries for Fortran/C/C++.
Many, if not most, of the (freely available) open source optimization codes are written in Fortran and or C/C++. For a quick overview, please have a look at Hans Mittelmann's Decision Tree for Optimization Software.
There is also the COIN-OR Foundation, which hosts many optimization codes (most written in C/C++, I believe) and support tools. You can find the list of available projects here.
If by complex optimization you refer to complex numbers, please have a look at this SO question for further elaboration on how to formulate optimization problems involving complex numbers.
You can use Fortran to write routines for computation and transform everything into a dll.
The application can be written in C++ (for example GUI in Qt).
For visualization there are good libraries in C++, like VTK, otherwise you can use OpenGl.
If you want numerical libraries additionally, you can use LAPACK for example.
I have seen lots of people suggesting the Boost library on Stack Overflow, so I am also thinking of learning it. But today I came across this link: http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.xml#Boost
I wanted to know about its acceptance in industry at a broader level. My current company also doesn't allow me to use this so I am confused whether to look into this or not.
Parts of Boost library is currently being accepted into the Standard library for C++0x and it is regarded as one of the top libs with a high industry acceptance. I'm actually unaware of any other library getting accepted into the C++ Standard Library on such a large scale.
"Ten Boost libraries are already included in the C++ Standards Committee's Library Technical Report (TR1) and will be in the new C++0x Standard now being finalized. C++0x will also include several more Boost libraries in addition to those from TR1. More Boost libraries are proposed for TR2."
You should definately look into this. Don't go by Google or any other large institution. They generally have to work to a subset of any complex language like C++. Hence, they'll have restrictions on which parts they can use so that it's easier to hire and train engineers to use the code base.
Additionally, Boost leverages many aspects of the higher forms of functionality within C++, case in point template meta-programming. Boost provides for a safer, though bulkier, form of functions as first class objects. They add in a more powerful "bind" which works so well with the standard library that I'd be lost without it. Finally, they have in place tuples and hash tables, both fundamental datatypes in modern development libraries.
In short, I really can't name one reason why you wouldn't want to look at Boost, even just to learn something. It's peer reviewed and largely platform independent. The source code is a treasure trove of information and more advanced programming techniques.
I think the who is using boost web page speaks for itself. Notably: Adobe, McAfee, and Real Networks probably qualify as industry.
My current company also does not allow me
to use [boost]. So I am confused whether
to look into it or not.
You might want to dig a little further and find out why. As others have said, Boost is a fantastically useful set of open source and peer reviewed libraries of extremely high quality. Look at their development LOC chart for an idea how long and how much $$ it would cost your company to reinvent the wheel.
I depend heavily on Python's standard library, both for useful data structures and manipulators (e.g., collections and itertools) and for utilities (e.g., optparse, json, and logging), to skip the boilerplate and just Get Things Done. Looking through documentation on the C++ standard library, it seems entirely about data structures, with little in the way of the "batteries included" in Python's standard library.
The Boost library is the only open-source C++ library collection I know of that resembles the Python standard library, however while it does have utility libraries such as Regular Expression support, most of it is also dedicated to data structures. I'm just really surprised that even something as simple as assured parsing and writing a CSV file, made delightfully simple with the Python csv module, looks to require rolling-your-own in C++ (even if you leverage some parsing library by Boost).
Are there other open-source libraries out there for C++ that provide "batteries"? If not, what do you do as a C++ programmer: hunt for individual utility libraries (and if so, how), or just roll your own (which seems annoying and wasteful)?
The Poco library is more like other languages' standard libraries.
Actually the Poco web site's logo says "C++ now comes with batteries included!", which seems to be precisely what you're asking for.
I didn't like it when I tried because I found it too C-like and with too many dependencies between parts (difficult to single out just the functionality you want).
But there are many people & firms using it, so it seems I'm in minority and you will perhaps find it very useful.
In addition, as others have mentioned, for data structures, parsers, and indeed an interface to Python!, and such stuff, check out Boost.
Cheers & hth.,
While C++ does offer many of the comforts extended by OO it keeps a very simple standard library. C++ has STL and Boost. These are very good, and have more then just datastructures.
If your needs are these sorts of higher order functions for prototyping or making application without intense (relative term) speed requirements then C/C++ is probably not the right choice for you. I believe you will find that for most projects that high level languages will be fast enough for your needs. If you are working on an application that requires C/C++ speed (and accompanying standard deviations) then you should probably invest your time carefully picking each individual library you will be using.
http://beta.boost.org/community/sandbox.html
http://www.boostpro.com/vault/
also you can google for "boost+bar", eg
boost log ->
http://boost-log.sourceforge.net/libs/log/doc/html/index.html
boost threadpool ->
http://threadpool.sourceforge.net/
http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_45_0/?view=categorized
Boost isn't just about data structures - it has lots of the batteries you want - parsing, threads, collections, logging, etc.
With C and C++ you typically won't find a "do it all" library, instead you'll use individual libraries that do different things. You can use one library that does JSON parsing, one that does crypto, one that does logging, etc.
Boost and Qt are the only ones that would be more of a "do it all" type library.
I am a student, and new to C++. I am searching for a standard C++ API that is as comprehensive as the Java API. So far I have been using cplusplus.com, and cppreference.com.
Please any help would be greatly appreciated.
C++ and Java have very different standard libraries because they make very different assumptions about what they are going to be used for.
Java assumes that applications or applets will be running on a host with a full featured OS, with a defined way of doing most normal things.
There's a lot of content in that, for instance, in java, the output will be an application or applet. C++ does not make that assumption, because C++ can be used for building OS Kernels and drivers for kernels, it can be used for programming full stack real time applications on microcontrollers, or processing blocks in supercomputers.
C++ can be used for implementing the very operating system on which it will run.
For these reasons, the standard library assumes almost nothing about what it will have available, and so the standard library doesn't make any dependencies on those features.
The only exception is with files and streaming, because almost any operating system like stack has something that looks like a file stream if it has anything like files at all.
If you want a richer set of OS Specific api's you need to look at something non-standard. A great choice is the Qt framework, which provides many tools similar to what is found in the Java libraries, is cross platform, and works well with native C++ idioms.
C++ has a standard library.
You can try reading the "The C++ Standard Library: A Tutorial and Reference". While I don't own it myself, it's on our book list (which I recommend you check out), so it shouldn't be bad.
Note C++ isn't Java, so the libraries don't necessarily have the same functionality. Another resource you'll want to look at is Boost, which serves as a source for well-written C++ libraries for things the standard library lacks.
GNU C++ Standard library documentation is the one I refer to most often.
Java is a virtual machine language and as such attempts to have a comprehensive api to provide a platform independent method of drawing/wrtinging to files / anything. IN the guts of JRE they are taking these generic inputs and using them to do platform specific things. In C++ you are the one that does that work. Many c++ libraries are platform specific see MFC, ATL or code that is written for XWindows it your job to decide how you want to implement a feature and see if that is a platform specific feature or can be done in a platform independent manner.
If you are writing on windows or unix I can assure that the OS API is very complete and will allow you to do what ever your trying to accomplish. Also take a look at cross platfom libraries like lib qt.
Java's standard library is aimed at providing ready-to-use functionality, while the C++ standard library is aimed at providing building blocks that aren't defined by the core language. The Boost library has mainly the same orientation as the standard library (with a few exceptions such as image processing). I think the closest you can get to something like Java's standard library is the Poco library.
However, when I tried on the Poco library I found that it was a bit too C-oriented for my taste.
That is, it's not "modern". You get that impression straight away without even looking at the APIs, because the online docs uses 1990's frames. :-) However, it may fill your needs.
If you mean the c++ standard library I'd look at www.cplusplus.com. It covers the current standards. After familiarizing yourself with that, you could try looking at boost.
There are a number of changes in the upcoming c++0x standard. Wikipedia has info on a number of these as does SO.
The number one book, IMO, for c++ is Effective C++ by Scott Meyers.