[Bioperl-l] use of no_* to mean 'number_of', negative booleans

[Chris Fields]

I don't think it would require code changes right away; for the time  
being no_* will just alias num_*.  We can probably have deprecation  
warnings activate when we reach a particular version.

chris

On Jun 9, 2009, at 11:26 AM, Scott Markel wrote:

> Chris,
>
> I just checked our code for the Sequence Analysis Collection in
> Pipeline Pilot.  We've got a few places we'd need to make code
> changes, but we like your suggestion.  So, no objections from us.
>
> Scott
>
> Scott Markel, Ph.D.
> Principal Bioinformatics Architect  email:  smarkel at accelrys.com
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>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: bioperl-l-bounces at lists.open-bio.org [mailto:bioperl-l-
>> bounces at lists.open-bio.org] On Behalf Of Chris Fields
>> Sent: Tuesday, 09 June 2009 9:09 AM
>> To: BioPerl List
>> Subject: [Bioperl-l] use of no_* to mean 'number_of', negative  
>> booleans
>>
>> All,
>>
>> I've noticed a few methods in bioperl with names like 'no_Foo' that
>> mean 'number of Foo' (such as SimpleAlign's no_sequences).  The
>> problem I foresee are possible ambiguities, particularly with  
>> negative
>> boolean checks (eg 'no_Foo' could also mean 'this instance contains  
>> no
>> Foo'), something that BioPerl also has with various settings.
>>
>> I suggest we alias these as num_* to disambiguate that.  There's no
>> easy way to change already in-place flag setting w/o going through a
>> deprecation cycle, but we can promote using positive booleans where
>> possible (eg 'is_foo' or 'has_foo' instead of 'no_foo').  We can  
>> leave
>> the older 'no_*' methods as is for the time being and maybe deprecate
>> them later.
>>
>> If no one has objections I'll add these in as needed.
>>
>> chris
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