[Biojava-l] get all symbols in an alphabet

[Thomas Down]

On Thu, Jan 09, 2003 at 11:26:13AM +1300, Schreiber, Mark wrote:
> Hi -
> 
> If the Alphabet is a FiniteAlphabet you can get an iterator over the
> Alphabet or you can use AlphabetManager to generate an AlphabetIndex
> which can be used to access each Symbol.
> 
> The getSymbol method you describe generates an ambiguity symbol that
> uniquely describes the set of Symbols in the list.

No, you're thinking of getAmbiguity(Set symbols).

getSymbol is only really meaningful for alphabets which
represent the product of two or more other alphabets.  So
for the alphabet (DNA x DNA), it contains symbols like
(adenine thymine) and (guanine gaunine).  getSymbol(List) is
used to get hold of these composite symbols.

    Thomas.