One of the features Julia has to offer is Interoperability. Language interoperability could be defined as the ability for two or more languages to interact or communicate for effective data transmission in a system.
With the help of various packages, Julia can call several programming languages. JuliaInterop is a GitHub organization that has created several packages that can be used to integrate Julia with different languages. In this article, we'll look at integration with Python, R, and C++.
It is possible to call Python from Julia using PyCall. Then to install PyCall, run the command in the Julia REPL.
using PkgPkg.add("PyCall")
PyCall will download the Miniconda installer and create a separate Conda environment just for Julia all by itself. Let's look at an example below:
julia> using PyCall>>> math = pyimport("math")>>> math.sin(math.pi / 4) # returns ≈ 1/√2 = 0.70710678...
To inter-operate Julia with the R language, the RCall package is used. Run the following commands on Julia REPL:
using PkgPkg.add("RCall")
This will automatically install R using Conda if R is not detected. For further customization, check out the documentation page. For example:
julia> using RCall # This will initialize the R process in the backgroundjulia> num = 7julia> print(num)7
Macros transfer can also occur between variables in the R and Julia environments. The copied variable will have the same name as the original.
julia> x = 571julia> @rput x57
More methods can be found on the official website.
It is possible to call C++ into Julia with the package Cxx. To install the Cxx package, run the following command on Julia REPL:
using PkgPkg.add("Cxx")
For further installation guides (like system requirements), visit the repository README for more information.
A simple example of embedding a C++ function in Julia is as follows:
# include headersjulia> using Cxxjulia> cxx""" #include<iostream> """# Declare the functionjulia> cxx"""void mycppfunction() {int z = 0;int y = 5;int x = 10;z = x*y + 2;std::cout << "The number is " << z << std::endl;}"""# Convert C++ to Julia functionjulia> julia_function() = @cxx mycppfunction()julia_function (generic function with 1 method)# Run the functionjulia> julia_function()The number is 52
Note: Most of the examples were extracted from the official repository pages of these packages. Check out JuliaInterop for more examples and guides on other languages that can be called into Julia.
In this Answer, we learned how possible it is to call some programming languages from Julia. This also establishes the fact that Julia is a friendly language and can be used when it comes to building a system with multiple languages (Interoperability).
Click the terminal below to see the above code in action:
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