Hi Paulo,
On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 8:55 AM, Paulo van Breugel
<p.vanbreugel@gmail.com> wrote:
I am trying to familiarize myself a bit with python scripting in GRASS. I am
a bit confused about the different approaches that seem possible. More
specifically, there is the pygrass
(http://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Python/pygrass) and grass python scripting
library (
http://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/GRASS_Python_Scripting_Library). Is there
somewhere a concise description explaining the difference between the two.
I tried to explain the different approach in the following article:
Zambelli, P., Gebbert, S., Ciolli, M., 2013. Pygrass: An Object
Oriented Python Application Programming Interface (API) for Geographic
Resources Analysis Support System (GRASS) Geographic Information
System (GIS). ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information 2,
201–219.
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijgi2010201
http://www.mdpi.com/2220-9964/2/1/201/pdf
And for writing python scripts (addons), which of these two are a better
option to use (for somebody fairly familiar with GRASS, with some experience
in writing shell or R scripts for GRASS, but with no experience at all with
python).
pygrass has been written to be as much pythonic as possible, therefore
for people knowing python should be easier to work with pygrass.
In general I think that the grass.script API is more tested and stable
and more important it is working for both GRASS6 and GRASS7.
pygrass.Module has been devloped to interact with a module as an
object, setting the module parameters, check if the parameters are
valid or not, and execute the module. The Module class has been used
to apply a GRASS module over the current region, splitting the region
in several tiles, create a mapset for each tile, execute the module
and then patch the results and remove the temporary mapset
(GridModule), or in ParallelModuleQueue to handle a queue of modules.
If combine with shortcuts can Improve the python syntax:
from:
run_command("r.slope.aspect", elevation="elevation", slope="slope",
overwrite=True)
to:
r.slope_aspect(elevation="elevation", slope="slope", overwrite=True)
that is closer to the BASH syntax.
But what is particularly interesting of pygrass is the ability to use
and call the C API of GRASS through the ctypes , all the functions in
the grass.script modules are calling and parsing the results of some
GRASS modules.
With pygrass we are using directly the C API of GRASS, like for
example you can write a function that work row by row or pixel by
pixel to do some analysis on a raster map, or line by line in a vector
map, and user don't have to know C or the C API of GRASS.
I hope that the difference is clearer now, otherwise please ask me! 
Pietro