Contents

• PDL -- Year Zero
  • Who this book is for.
  • The case for a high-level approach.
  • The case for a free Data Language.
  • So why Perl?
  • What this book is about.
  • What this book is NOT about.
  • Conventions used in this book
  
  
• A Whirlwind tour through PDL
  • Alright let's do something.
  • Whirling through the Whirlpool
    • Measuring the brightness of M51
    • Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
    • Getting Complex with M51
  • Roundoff
  
  
• The Basics of PDL
  • Basic manipulations of piddles
    • What is a piddle?
    • Creating piddles
    • Elementary arithmetic.
    • In-place arithmetic
    • Using = and .=
  • Piddles are NOT Perl `arrays'
    • The benefits of piddles.
    • Lists and Hashes of piddles
  • PDL Datatypes
    • Type conversion and creation
    • Complex types
  • PDL projection operators
    • What about projecting along other dimensions?
  • `Threading' over extra dimensions.
  • Example Problem
  
  
• Slicing, Dicing and Threading with PDL dimensions
  • Finding piddle dimensions.
  • The slice function -- regular subsets along axes
    • The basic slicing specification.
    • Modifying slices.
    • Does a slice consume memory?
    • Advanced slice syntax
    • PDL's Method notation
  • The dice and dice_axis functions -- irregular subsets along axes
  • Using mv, xchg and reorder -- transposing dimensions
  • Combining dimensions with clump
  • Splitting a dimension with splitdim
  • Adding dimensions with dummy
  • Completely general subsets of data with index, which and where
  • Example Problem
  • PDL threading and signatures
    • Threading
    • A simple example
    • Why bother
    • More examples
    • Why threading and why call it threading?
    • The general case: PDL functions and their signature
    • You can write your own threading routines
    • Matching threading dimensions
    • Promotion: When a piddle has fewer dimensions than required
    • Calling conventions and tight loops
    • Manipulating indices -- generalised slicing
    • Memory and speed implications -- Vaffines
    • writing your own threading aware function -- at the perl level!
    • A worked example
    • explicit threading for complex cases
  
  
• Graphics with PDL
  • Introduction
  • 2-dimensional graphics using PGPLOT
  • Introducing PDL::Graphics::PGPLOT
  • An overview of 2D plotting commands
    • Options in plot commands
    • Hard-copies and plot options
    • Setting default values for options
    • Setting up the plot area
    • Drawing lines and plotting points
    • Displaying images
    • Contour plots and vector fields
    • Drawing simple shapes
    • Text and legends
  • Using colour
  • Threading in PDL::Graphics::PGPLOT
  • Recording and playing back plot commands
  • The object oriented approach
    • Why use the OO interface
    • Usage of the OO interface
  • Using PGPLOT commands directly
  • 3D Graphics with OpenGL
    • Introduction
    • Parametric Graphics
    • Types of 3D Graphical Objects
    • More than one Image
    • Animation
    • Putting it all together -- cool hacks
    • The VRML backend
  • Pixel manipulations using the Gimp
    • The components of Gimp
    • Direct pixel access
    • Gimp Plug-Ins
    • More Information
  
  
• Advanced Examples of Using PDL
  • A PDL weather map
    • Drawing the map
    • Getting the weather data
    • Plotting the contour map
    • What happened?
  • Objects using PDL - defining your own data types
    • Implementing derived classes: The Complex module
  • Numerical simulations in PDL
    • The wave equation
    • Multiple dimensions and higher order
    • Gas dynamics
    • Ordinary Differential Equations
  
  
• Getting PDL
• PDL modules and functions index
• Index