Python bindings for the open source electromagnetic simulator Meep

Meep is a broadly used open source package for finite-difference time-domain electromagnetic simulations. Python bindings for Meep make it easier to use for researchers and open promising opportunities for integration with other packages in the Python ecosystem. As this project shows, implementing Python-Meep offers benefits for specific disciplines and for the wider research community

FluidFFT: common API (C++ and Python) for Fast Fourier Transform HPC libraries

The Python package fluidfft provides a common Python API for performing Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT) in sequential, in parallel and on GPU with different FFT libraries (FFTW, P3DFFT, PFFT, cuFFT). fluidfft is a comprehensive FFT framework which allows Python users to easily and efficiently perform FFT and the associated tasks, such as as computing linear operators and energy spectra. We describe the architecture of the package composed of C++ and Cython FFT classes, Python "operator" classes and Pythran functions. The package supplies utilities to easily test itself and benchmark the different FFT solutions for a particular case and on a particular machine. We present a performance scaling analysis on three different computing clusters and a microbenchmark showing that fluidfft is an interesting solution to write efficient Python applications using FFT

Pantry: A Macro Library for Python

Python lacks a simple way to create custom syntax and constructs that goes outside of its own syntax rules. A paradigm that allows for these possibilities to exist within languages is macros. Macros allow for a shorter set of syntax to expand into a longer set of instructions at compile-time. This gives the capability to evolve the language to fit personal needs. Pantry, implements a hygienic text-substitution macro system for Python. Pantry achieves this through the introduction of an additional preparsing step that utilizes parsing and lexing of the source code. Pantry proposes a way to simply declare a pattern to be recognized, articulate instructions that replace the pattern, and replace the pattern in the source code. This form of meta-programming allows its users to be able to more concisely write their Python code and present the language in a more natural and intuitive manner. We validate Pantry’s utility through use cases inspired by Python Enhancement Proposals (PEPs) and go through five of them. These are requests from the Python community for features to be implemented into Python. Pantry fulfills these desires through the composition of macros that that performs the new feature