pyCONTIN package:

This is a python wrapper for CONTIN package. CONTIN package is a Fortran77 program for solving Fredelhom equations of the first kind, developed by S.W. Provencher.

Currently this wrapper generates the input file for CONTIN main program, and then parse the output of the CONTIN main program.

Official webpage of CONTIN

How does the program work

input for pyCONTIN

• Data to be analyzed
• Parameter file for CONTIN

The process

1. The program reads the data and the parameter file, then it generates input files for CONTIN fortran program.
2. CONTIN does the calculation and returns the results in an ouput file.
3. pyCONTIN parse the output file and returns the result

Files required to run this program

./dev/CONTINWrapper.py: Main script of pyCONTIN. Only this file, this file does not depend on other python files in this script. Most of the python files in this package are just test files.

./exec/contin.for: The main program of doing inverse Laplace transform

./dev/paramTemplate.txt: A parameter file set up by the user for setting the parameters of CONTIN.

Installation and setup

• Install gfortran for your system
• In ./exec folder, run the following command to

gfortran -std=legacy contin.for -o contin.out

• Change CONTINPath variable at the beginning of CONTINWrapper.py to the path your fortran executable contin.out. The path can be set as the relative path to the path of CONTINWrapper.py

Usage

The calculated results in the ouput file of CONTIN looks like this:

      ALPHA    ALPHA/S(1)     OBJ. FCTN.       VARIANCE      STD. DEV.    DEG FREEDOM    PROB1 TO REJECT    PROB2 TO REJECT
 * 6.11E-08      8.02E-13    9.83727E+00    9.83727E+00      9.923E-02          1.000              0.000              1.000

    ORDINATE    ERROR  ABSCISSA
   0.000E+00  5.5D-19  5.00E-06X                                                                                                   
   0.000E+00  4.2D-17  7.12E-06X                                                                                                   
   0.000E+00  7.1D-17  1.01E-05X                                                                                                   
   0.000E+00  1.1D-17  1.44E-05X 

PyCONTIN parses these output blocks and returns a list of tuples like this:

[[(alphaParam1, dataArray1), (alphaParam2,dataArray2),....]

alphaParam records the row next to ALPHA ALPHA/S(1) OBJ. FCTN. ... dataArray records the three column data after ORDINATE ERROR ABSCISSA

For example script, see ./dev/pyCONTIN_demo.py

Python version

python3