Customer Reviews

Gnu Scientific Library: Reference Manual

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This is a printed version of the GSL Reference Manual that's available on gnu.org, so there's no content here you couldn't get for free on the internet, and you have the privilege of trying as much as you want before you buy. I purchased the book for the convenience and ease-of-reading that comes with a printed volume, and to help support Free Software development. The typeset equations are much easier on the eye than the text renderings; the binding and printing are of very high quality. The price is very reasonable. One disadvantage, common to all paper documentation, is that it will eventually go out of date. Bottom line: if you use GSL, you'll get your money's worth from this book.

This is a great manual. Professionally written and very easy to read. GSL is a lot easier to use than Numerical Recipes.

Galassi et al have provided many examples to illustrate generic uses for library functions. Knowlege of C-programming is required, especially pointers and structures. The manual is available for free on the web, but the printed edition is bound and convenient to read. Plus, GSL is free and open-source, and buying this manual throws some cash the developers' way.

It's unlikely that the manual will be outdated anytime soon, as GSL developers are satisfied with the library and don't plan to make any major changes (or so they say on their website) apart from minor bugfixes.

Among a few issues with GSL are that GSL's handling of complex datatypes is a little clumsy IMHO, and their matrix diagonalization routines are not so great, and only work for hermitian matrices. Of course, you can use LAPACK for non-hermitian matrices. Also, they should provide some tips and tricks used to simplify programs using GSL.

I've tried out their BLAS stuff, their ODE integrators (they have rk4 & 5, Prince Dormand, Gaussian integration stuff and Bulirsch-Stoer), their special functions and their quadrature stuff. The libraries seem pretty thread safe (as they say) as I'm running them on SMP systems and haven't have any problems yet.

Overall, fine work.

I think that this book is a good manual for GSL.