GNU Data Language

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GNU Data Language
GDL logo
Gdl screenshot.png
GDL rendering the Mandelbrot set
Developer(s) Marc Schellens
Initial release 2004
Stable release 0.9.5 / October 12, 2014 (2014-10-12)
Development status Active
Written in C++
Platform Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, POSIX, Windows
Type Technical computing
License GNU General Public License
Website gnudatalanguage.sourceforge.net

The GNU Data Language (GDL) is a free alternative to IDL (Interactive Data Language).[1][2][3] Together with its library routines, GDL is developed to serve as a tool for data analysis and visualization in such disciplines as astronomy,[4] geosciences, and medical imaging.[5] GDL is licensed under the GPL. Other open-source numerical data analysis tools similar to GDL include GNU Octave, NCAR Command Language (NCL), Perl Data Language (PDL), R, Scilab, SciPy, and Yorick.

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, HDF (v4 & v5), GRIB, PNG, TIFF, and DICOM. Graphical output is handled by X11, PostScript, SVG, 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 breakpoints. 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) numerical library (similar to Intel MKL) to have excellent computing performance on multi-cores processors, with better benchmark than IDL on large matrix operations.[5]

Packaged versions of GDL are available for several Linux and BSD flavours as well as Mac OS X. The source code compiles on Microsoft Windows (since GDL 0.9.3)[6] and other UNIX systems, including Solaris.

GDL is not an official GNU package.

See also

References

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External links