[Bioperl-l] Other object oddities

[Mark A. Jensen]

This is definitely a reasonable issue to chase down. How to do it needs
a little care. I personally see 'seq' and think 'object', and have resorted to
'seqstr' in my own code to hold/access just strings. FWIW, my preference would
be to have any object that has a seq object as a property return objects
when a '..._seq' accessor is called. However, the seq objects themselves
generally contain the sequence string in their seq() property. We wouldn't
want to disrupt that, but would it be worth creating an alias getter/setter for
the Seq classes seq() property called 'seqstr'? We could then count on

$foo->bar_seq, an object
$foo->bar_seq->seqstr, a string
$foo->seqstr, a string (not nec same as above)

cheers Mark
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kevin Brown" <Kevin.M.Brown at asu.edu>
Cc: "BioPerl List" <Bioperl-l at lists.open-bio.org>
Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 11:31 AM
Subject: Re: [Bioperl-l] Other object oddities


>I don't mind that Bio::Seq uses seq to return a string. In fact I prefer
> that. Just would be nice if other objects obeyed the same convention.
> Bio::SeqFeature::Generic returns an object for both entire_seq and seq,
> but uses attach_seq to store the Bio::Seq object into the Feature.
>
> Maybe SeqFeature could be adjusted so that ->seq returns the sequence
> string of the feature (just like Bio::Seq) and ->feature_seq returns the
> Bio::Seq object.
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Hilmar Lapp [mailto:hlapp at gmx.net]
>> Sent: Sunday, May 03, 2009 11:37 AM
>> To: Kevin Brown
>> Cc: BioPerl List
>> Subject: Re: [Bioperl-l] Other object oddities
>>
>> I agree, $seq->seq() could possibly be better named. Maybe $seq-
>>  >seqstr()?
>>
>> The thing is that having $seq->seq() return an object would be
>> meaningless - it would be $self.
>>
>> You can test what kind of object you have using ref() or isa():
>>
>> $seq = $obj->seq();
>> # we need the sequence string
>> $seq = $seq->seq() if ref($seq) &&
>> $seq->isa("Bio::PrimarySeqI");
>>
>> There has been a naming consistency review, but it's been a long time.
>>
>> -hilmar
>>
>>
>> On Apr 30, 2009, at 5:56 PM, Kevin Brown wrote:
>>
>> > So, I'm using quite a bit of bioperl code in my own stuff and have
>> > been
>> > seeing some oddities with the naming of methods. A good example
>> > would be
>> > in the Bio::Seq and Bio::SeqFeature::Generic. Both have a method
>> > called
>> > "seq" but in the latter case it returns an object (and expects an
>> > object
>> > when doing a Set) and in the former it returns a string and
>> expects a
>> > string when doing a Set.
>> >
>> > This makes for a bit of brain freeze on my part when the return from
>> > another object might be a Bio::Seq or
>> Bio::SeqFeature::Generic and now
>> > calling the ->seq returns different things.
>> >
>> > Guess I'm just curious if anyone has done an audit of the
>> methods of
>> > the
>> > various objects and their return types to see how
>> consistent they are
>> > across even a subsection of the codebase?
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Bioperl-l mailing list
>> > Bioperl-l at lists.open-bio.org
>> > http://lists.open-bio.org/mailman/listinfo/bioperl-l
>>
>> -- 
>> ===========================================================
>> : Hilmar Lapp  -:-  Durham, NC  -:-  hlapp at gmx dot net :
>> ===========================================================
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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