GNU Scientific Library

The GSL project was initiated in 1996 by physicists Mark Galassi and James Theiler of Los Alamos National Laboratory.[https://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/ GSL homepage]. They aimed at writing a modern replacement for widely used but somewhat outdated Fortran libraries such as Netlib.[https://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/design/gsl-design.html#SEC1 GSL design document]. They carried out the overall design and wrote early modules; with that ready they recruited other scientists to contribute.

The "overall development of the library and the design and implementation of the major modules" was carried out by Brian Gough and Gerard Jungman. Other major contributors were Jim Davies, Reid Priedhorsky, M. Booth, and F. Rossi.

Version 1.0 was released in 2001. In the following years, the library expanded only slowly; as the documentation stated, the maintainers were more interested in stability than in additional functionality. Major version 1 ended with release 1.16 of July 2013; this was the only public activity in the three years 2012–2014.

Vigorous development resumed with publication of version 2.0 in October 2015, which included user contributed patches. The latest version 2.8 was released in May 2024.

The following example program calculates the value of the Bessel function of the first kind and order zero for 5:[https://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/doc/html/usage.html#an-example-program Using the Library. An Example Program]. GSL documentation.

1. include
2. include

int main(void)

{

double x = 5.0;

double y = gsl_sf_bessel_J0(x);

printf("J0(%g) = %.18e\n", x, y);

return 0;

}

The example program has to be linked to the GSL library

upon compilation:

$ gcc $(gsl-config --cflags) example.c $(gsl-config --libs)

The output is shown below and should be correct to double-precision accuracy:

J0(5) = -1.775967713143382920e-01

The software library provides facilities for:

{{columns-list|colwidth=24em|

• Basic mathematical functions
• Complex numbers
• Polynomials
• B-splines
• Special functions
• Vectors and matrices
• Permutations
• Combinations
• Multisets
• Sorting
• BLAS
• Linear algebra
• Eigensystems
• Fast Fourier transforms
• Numerical integration (based on QUADPACK)
• Random number generation
• Quasi-random sequences
• Random number distributions
• Statistics
• Histograms
• N-tuples
• Monte Carlo integration
• Simulated annealing
• Ordinary differential equations
• Interpolation
• Numerical differentiation
• Chebyshev approximations
• Series acceleration
• Discrete Hankel transform
• Root finding in one and multiple dimensions
• Minimization in one and multiple dimensions
• Least-squares fitting
• Nonlinear least-squares fitting
• Physical constants
• IEEE floating-point arithmetic
• Discrete wavelet transform

}}

Since the GSL is written in C, it is straightforward to provide wrappers for other programming languages. Such wrappers currently exist for

• AMPL[https://ampl.github.io/amplgsl/ AMPL bindings for the GNU Scientific Library] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211028035110/https://ampl.github.io/amplgsl/ |date=2021-10-28 }}.
• C++[http://ccgsl.sourceforge.net/ ccgsl: a C++ interface for the GNU Scientific Library]; [http://cholm.home.cern.ch/cholm/misc/#gslmm GSL-- C++ wrappers for GSL] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150129094320/http://cholm.home.cern.ch/cholm/misc/#gslmm |date=2015-01-29 }};[http://gslwrap.sourceforge.net/ GSLwrap: A C++ wrapper class for the GNU Scientific Library];[https://github.com/tevaughan/gslcpp/ gslcpp: A Header-Only, Modern C++-Library Wrapping the GNU Scientific Library].
• Fortran[https://doku.lrz.de/display/PUBLIC/FGSL+-+A+Fortran+interface+to+the+GNU+Scientific+Library FGSL - A Fortran interface to the GNU Scientific Library].
• Haskell[https://hackage.haskell.org/package/hmatrix-special The hmatrix-special package, an interface to GSL special functions].[https://hackage.haskell.org/package/hmatrix-gsl The hmatrix-gsl package, a purely functional interface to selected numerical computations, internally implemented using GSL].
• Java[https://github.com/bytedeco/javacpp-presets/tree/master/gsl JavaCPP Presets for GSL].
• Julia[https://github.com/JuliaMath/GSL.jl Julia interface to GSL].
• Common Lisp[http://common-lisp.net/project/gsll/ GSLL, GNU Scientific Library for Lisp].
• OCaml[https://mmottl.github.io/gsl-ocaml/ gsl-ocaml: OCaml bindings to the GSL].
• Octave
• Perl Data Language
• Python[http://pygsl.sourceforge.net/#pygsl Python interface for GNU Scientific Library].
• R[https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/RcppGSL/index.html RcppGSL: 'Rcpp' Integration for 'GNU GSL' Vectors and Matrices].[https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/gsl/index.html gsl: wrapper for the Gnu Scientific Library].
• Ruby[https://rubygems.org/gems/rb-gsl rb-gsl: Ruby/GSL is a Ruby interface to the GNU Scientific Library, for numerical computing with Ruby].
• Rust[https://docs.rs/GSL/6.0.0/rgsl/ rust-gsl: A Rust binding for the GSL library (the GNU Scientific Library).]

The GSL can be used in C++ classes, but not using pointers to member functions, because the type of pointer to member function is different from pointer to function.[http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/pointers-to-members.html#faq-33.1 Pointers to member functions]. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041013202445/http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/pointers-to-members.html |date=2004-10-13 }}. Instead, pointers to static functions have to be used. Another common workaround is using a functor.

C++ wrappers for GSL are available. Not all of these are regularly maintained. They do offer access to matrix and vector classes without having to use GSL's interface to malloc and free functions. Some also offer support for also creating workspaces that behave like Smart pointer classes. Finally, there is (limited, as of April 2020) support for allowing the user to create classes to represent a parameterised function as a functor.

While not strictly wrappers, there are some C++ classes [https://neutronstars.utk.edu/code/o2scl/html/index.html o2scl Object-oriented Scientific Computing Library]; [https://web.archive.org/web/20101103060841/http://dev.thep.lu.se/yat/ yat]. that allow C++ users to use the Gnu Scientific Library with wrapper features.

{{Portal|Free and open-source software}}

{{commons}}

• List of numerical-analysis software
• List of numerical libraries
• Netlib
• Numerical Recipes

{{notelist}}

{{Reflist}}

• {{Official website|https://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/}}
• [https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3818202 GSL Design Document]
• The [https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/gsl/index.html gsl package] for R (programming language), an R wrapper for the special functions and quasi random number generators.
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20120427034149/http://www.floss4science.com/the-gnu-scientific-library-gsl-mark-galassi/ FLOSS FOR SCIENCE interview] with Mark Galassi on the history of GSL.

{{GNU}}

Category:C (programming language) libraries

Category:Free computer libraries

Category:Free software programmed in C

Scientific Library

Category:Mathematical libraries

Category:Numerical libraries

Category:Numerical software

Category:Articles with example C code

Category:Software using the GNU General Public License