ROOT


ROOT is an object-oriented computer program and library developed by CERN. It was originally designed for particle physics data analysis and contains several features specific to the field, but it is also used in other applications such as astronomy and data mining. The latest minor release is 6.34, as of 2025-04-08.
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Description

CERN maintained the CERN Program Library written in FORTRAN for many years. Its development and maintenance were discontinued in 2003 in favour of ROOT, which is written in the C++ programming language.
ROOT development was initiated by René Brun and Fons Rademakers in 1994. Some parts are published under the GNU Lesser General Public License and others are based on GNU General Public License software, and are thus also published under the terms of the GPL. It provides platform independent access to a computer's graphics subsystem and operating system using abstract layers. Parts of the abstract platform are: a graphical user interface and a GUI builder, container classes, reflection, a C++ script and command line interpreter, object serialization and persistence.
The packages provided by ROOT include those for
A key feature of ROOT is a data container called tree, with its substructures branches and leaves. A tree can be seen as a sliding window to the raw data, as stored in a file. Data from the next entry in the file can be retrieved by advancing the index in the tree. This avoids memory allocation problems associated with object creation, and allows the tree to act as a lightweight container while handling buffering invisibly.
ROOT is designed for high computing efficiency, as it is required to process data from the Large Hadron Collider's experiments estimated at several petabytes per year. ROOT is mainly used in data analysis and data acquisition in particle physics experiments, and most experimental plots and results in those subfields are obtained using ROOT.
The inclusion of a C++ interpreter makes this package very versatile as it can be used in interactive, scripted and compiled modes in a manner similar to commercial products like MATLAB.
On July 4, 2012, the ATLAS and CMS LHC's experiments presented the status of the Standard Model Higgs search. .

Applications

Several particle physics collaborations have written software based on ROOT, often in favor of using more generic solutions.

Criticisms

Criticisms of ROOT include its difficulty for beginners, as well as various aspects of its design and implementation. Frequent causes of frustration include extreme code bloat, heavy use of global variables, and an overcomplicated class hierarchy. From time to time these issues are discussed on the ROOT users mailing list. While scientists dissatisfied with ROOT have in the past managed to work around its flaws, some of the shortcomings are regularly addressed by the ROOT team. The CINT interpreter, for example, has been replaced by the Cling interpreter, and numerous bugs are fixed with every release.