Learning IPython for Interactive Computing and Data Visualization - Second Edition

Writing C in Python with Cython

Cython is a Python library that lets you combine C and Python in various ways. There are two main use-cases:

• Wrapping a C/C++ library in Python
• Optimizing your Python code by statically compiling it to C

In this section, we will demonstrate the second use-case. You will find an example of the first use-case in the IPython Cookbook and at http://docs.cython.org/src/tutorial/index.html.

Installing Cython and a C compiler for Python

If you use Anaconda, you should already have Cython (you can always do conda install cython to check).

For Cython to work, you need a C compiler compatible with your version of Python. This is much easier on Unix systems. Here are the instructions given at http://docs.cython.org/src/quickstart/install.html ...