Re: [Help-gsl] Re: gsl c++ wrapper ?

[Rohit Garg]

On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 1:17 PM, Hongzheng Wang <address@hidden> wrote:
> Frankly, you have slowly drifted off the subject since your previous
> post.
With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps yes. My intention is not to
troll at all (even for things that may or may not be better), so
please bear with me.

> For the original question, my personal opinion on this subject is that
> just build the program in C++ with some favorite style and narrow the
> interface between the C++ part and GSL facilities.  By contrast,
> wrapping GSL is not an easy choice because GSL utilizes so many
> classic C style coding tricks, e.g., void* pointer conversion etc.
> Specifically, for vector/matrix support library, a third part one out
> of GSL can be used, because most parts of GSL facilities can work well
> with built-in array (which are widely supported in other vector/matrix
> libraries) and do not rely on specific GSL vector/matrix interfaces.

But that still begs the question. Why would you want to use GSL's
linear algebra subset? GSL's comprehensive coverage makes it a
valuable tool for many tasks. I for one, mix it's histogram routines
with some operations from eigen trivially.

Considering that there is some community interest in writing C++ish
wrappers to GSL, I want to know what motivates such need? I mean why
invest effort here, when it is possible to take something that,
atleast appears to be, is better? Is there a particular reason/benefit
to investing effort in writing GSL's C++ bindings over simply using
eigen?

I might be missing something here, but is the interest in writing c++
wrappers is for just the linear algebra subset or for the whole GSL?

Full GSL c++ wrappers would be a good idea, I agree. I am not so
enthused about wrappers for just the linear algebra subset.

-- 
Rohit Garg

http://rpg-314.blogspot.com/

Senior Undergraduate
Department of Physics
Indian Institute of Technology
Bombay