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adding PDL support

adding PDL support

by Darwyn Cook -
Number of replies: 2
I am writing some questions for our Advanced Engineering Math course that require the use of Bessel functions. I am trying to install the PDL library to support these functions, following the directions here: http://webwork.maa.org/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=799#p2607.

I have PDL installed, and have checked that it works through the command line interface. I moved two modules, Math.pm and BESSEL.pm, into the pg/lib directory. I added these module names to the PG_module_list.pl file and into global.conf. I then created a macro file PGspecialfunctionsmacros.pl in the pg/macros folder which handles the sub _*_init.

I wrote a simple problem to test the module, using

$x = bessjn(4.1,3).

In the PDL shell this returns 0.433314702561693 in the perl shell. In a problem if I use the code
$x= bessjn(4.1,3)
BEGIN_TEXT
\($x\)
END_TEXT
I get Error: Operation ".": no method found as an output.

If I use $x = Compute("bessjn(4.1,3)" ); I get Not a HASH reference at [PG]/lib/Value.pm.

Any ideas on where I should go next?
In reply to Darwyn Cook

Re: adding PDL support

by Michael Gage -
I wouldn't expect a new function to work with MathObjects without a bit more work.

For your first example though, try something a little less sophisticated than Maria's example.

create something like this in PGspecialfunctionsmacros.pl (and make sure this 
file is included in the loadMacros segment of the problem)
sub bessjn {
my ($a, $b) = @_;
return MATH::bessjn($a,$b);
}

Perhaps it should be PDL::MATH::bessjn.  Look at the package declarations in the code to see what the full namespace should be. 


Once you get something like this working you can use shortcuts such as Maria's to automatically import a bunch of subroutines without having to write everything out.

I wasn't aware of the CPAN PDL modules.  They look like they might be useful for many things.

Hope this helps.


-- Mike
In reply to Michael Gage

Re: adding PDL support

by Darwyn Cook -
It looks like there is a bit more work to do. PDL uses its own programming language, where the underlying data structure is a piddle. There is code to convert a piddle to something Perl will recognize, but I have not been able to get WeBWorK to recognize that conversion code yet.
Will keep you posted, this does like a useful library.