GNU Scientific Library

In computing, the GNU Scientific Library (or GSL) is a software library written in the C programming language for numerical calculations in applied mathematics and science. The GSL is part of the GNU Project^[1] and is distributed under the GNU General Public License.

Software which uses GSL includes PSPP and Perl Data Language.

Example

The following example program calculates the value of the Bessel function for 5:^[2]

#include <stdio.h>
#include <gsl/gsl_sf_bessel.h>
 
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

Features

The software library provides facilities for:

• Basic mathematical functions
• Complex numbers
• Polynomials
• 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

C++ support

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.^[3] Instead, pointers to static functions have to be used. Another common work around is using a functor. C++ wrappers for GSL are available,^[4] although many are not regularly maintained.

See also

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

References

External links

• GNU Scientific Library project page