[Biopython-dev] Comparing reference objects from GenBank/EMBL records

[Peter Cock]

Hello all,

After some debate, we changed SeqRecord equality to raise an
error in Biopython 1.66 (previously Python's default object
comparison was used which is often unhelpful):

https://github.com/biopython/biopython/issues/559
https://github.com/biopython/biopython/pull/560

Related to this, one of the many objects which are often stored
within a SeqRecord are the Reference class defined under
Bio.SeqFeature, used when parsing GenBank/EMBL records.

Kai Blin opened an issue on comparing these Reference objects,
and a pull request to define simple equality for the Reference
class based on all its attributes being equal:

https://github.com/biopython/biopython/issues/600
https://github.com/biopython/biopython/pull/683

If anyone has views on this general topic, please comment on #600.

(Keep comments on the PR #683 to just the proposed implementation).

Thanks,

Peter