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simutils

C library that includes data structures and functions optimized for scientific programming and mathematics.

Why simutils?

simutils aims to fix some of the common issues encountered when doing scientific programming in C, with its main strengths in the following areas.

Implicit Size Information

Whenever one starts using more abstract data structures in C like arrays and strings, they immediately run into issues with knowing size. We want the length of an array or string somehow has to be relayed along with data type itself, which many times adds a lot of unnecessary overhead to the program.

All the data structures provided in simutils have macros that access size information. No more messing around with structs, global variables, or extra function parameters.

// Getting the length of a vector is just a macro call!
int vector_size = LENGTH(some_vector);

// Getting the rows/columns of a matrix are also just macro calls.
int num_rows = ROWS(some_matrix);
int num_cols = COLS(some_matrix);

1-Indexed Data Structures

While to some, array-like data structures being 1-indexed might appear to be a bit out-of-style, such a scheme allows for the seamless expression of mathematical models within programming. The vector, and matrix data structures proveided in simutils are all 1-indexed to fit this purpose.

Column-major Matrices

Converting between row-major and column-major matrices might be simple conceptually, but one quickly learns that implementing that "simple" change turns out to be a bit more involved than just switching i and j.

The matrix and matrix3 data structures in simutils are column-majored. Memory magic is done in the constructors for both the matrix and tensor so that the data structures can be both represented and indexed in column-major style.

// Incrementing j will traverse the *column* for both the data structures.
some_matrix[i][j];
some_tensor[i][j][k];

A bit more on how these features are achieved can be found in the documents.

Installing

Clone this repository with the following command:

git clone https://github.com/molee1354/simutils.git

Change into the new simutils directory

cd simutils

Build the library

make

Install the library by copying the compiled shared-object libsimutils.so into /usr/lib/, and the header files to /usr/include/. This step will require elevated privileges as it runs sudo commands.

make install

Usage

To use the data structures and math modules provided by simutils, simply include the simutil/*.h with the specified header file in your program's include directive.

Once simutils is properly installed, make sure to add the -lsimutils flag in the linking stage of your code.

For specific instructions on how to use the different simutils modules, refer to the documentations.