VecTcl

This package provides a numerical array extension for Tcl with support for vectors, matrices and higher-rank tensors of integers, floating point and complex numbers. It has builtin support for basic array shaping, slicing and linear algebra subroutines and is designed to integrate seamlessly with Tcl. The user interface consists of a single command, vexpr, which acts as an expression evaluator similar to expr. The language supported by vexpr is inspired by Matlab, which closely models the language used by textbook math.

VecTcl has the following nice features, which sets it apart from similar packages:

• easy to use
• reasonably fast
• interoperability with commands working on lists, and math::linearalgebra
• the vector language can be extended by Tcl procs
• automatic garbage collection by Tcl

Example

package require vectcl
namespace import vectcl::vexpr

# create a vector and multiply by 3
set x {1 2 3}
set y [vexpr {3*x}]
# y is now {3 6 9}

Currently a (small) patch to the core is required to make shimmering to lists efficient. It works without, but then the conversion from numeric arrays to lists goes via the string representation. There are no other dependencies besides the pt module of tcllib, which is required for the parser. The final version could use a parser implemented in C.

TODO

• More examples
• More linear algebra implementations (LU, eigenvalue, SVD, FFT)
• Optional LAPACK integration
• Various performance improvements
• User documentation
• Source code documentation