Python 2016

Introduction

Python is a widely used high-level programming language for general-purpose programming, created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991. An interpreted language, Python has a design philosophy which emphasizes code readability (notably using whitespace indentation to delimit code blocks rather than curly braces or keywords), and a syntax which allows programmers to express concepts in fewer lines of code than possible in languages such as C++ or Java. The language provides constructs intended to enable writing clear programs on both a small and large scale.

Installed version

The following version of Python are currently installed on the cluster:

• 2.7.12
• 3.5.2

Further, there are modules for Biopython(version: 1.68) and Scientifcpython (version:2.9.4 based on Python 2.7.12) installed. Biopython is a set of freely available tools for biological computation written in python. It is distributed to develop python libraries and applications which address the needs of current and future work in bioinformatics. Scientificpython is a collection of python modules for scientific computing. It contains support for geometry, mathematical functions, statistics, pyhsical units, IO, visualization and parallelization.

There are even more additional packages installed:

• numpy
• scipy
• nose
• ..

A complete list, including the version numbers on the installed packages can be obtained with the command

pip list

Python has to be loaded in order for this command to work. If any packages that you need are missing, you can either contact the Scientific Computing and we will install it or you can install it on your own in your $HOME-directory (instructions at the end of this article!).