[Bioperl-l] Bio::RootI

Lincoln Stein lstein@cshl.org
Sat, 17 Nov 2001 21:02:10 -0500


Hi Jason,

Thanks for fixing the problem I introduced with ref($self) eq 'HASH'
in Bio::RootI.  It was a thoughtless one-off.

I'm puzzled as to why the root interface has any object data at all.
I've always thought that interfaces should have methods only, and no
object data.  I use array-based objects a lot for performance
considerations, and inheriting from RootI is problematic because there
are various places where RootI assumes that $self is a hashref.

Would it be inconvenient to propose that Bio::RootI be recast as a
pure interface with object methods for getting and setting the cleanup
and debug flags, and that a new Bio::Root module be written that
implements the common hash-based methods?  Most modules would then
inherit from Bio::Root.

Lincoln

-- 
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Lincoln D. Stein                           Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
lstein@cshl.org			                  Cold Spring Harbor, NY
Positions available at my lab: see http://stein.cshl.org/#hire
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