[Bioperl-l] Bio::Cluster

[Hilmar Lapp]

Right. The thing with PrimarySeq::primary_id() is that that method 
must not return undef, and is supposed to return a unique ID. The 
memory location serves as the last resort in this case.

	-hilmar

On Tuesday, August 6, 2002, at 03:08  PM, Andrew Macgregor wrote:

> Hilmar Lapp wrote:
>
>> is there a
>> reason you don't want to return undef for a slot that's undef?
>>
> Hi Hilmar,
>
> No there's not really a reason I do this. When I was putting this 
> together I
> based it on Seq.pm. So I looked at code like this:
>
> sub primary_id {
>    my ($obj,$value) = @_;
>
>    if( defined $value) {
>       $obj->{'primary_id'} = $value;
>     }
>    if( ! exists $obj->{'primary_id'} ) {
>        return "$obj";
>    }
>    return $obj->{'primary_id'};
> }
>
>
> And basically followed that pattern. When something isn't present I 
> return
> the stringified reference. I thought I might be breaking something 
> in the
> bigger picture if I did not.
>
> I guess looking at this more closely this is only used for 
> primary_id. What
> purpose exactly does ' return "$obj" ' serve here? I guess my code 
> should
> just be something like:
>
> sub gene {
>    my ($obj,$value) = @_;
>
>    if( defined $value) {
>       $obj->{'gene'} = $value;
>     }
>    return $obj->{'gene'};
> }
>
>
> Which cuts out:
>
>    if( ! exists $obj->{'gene'} ) {
>        return "$obj";
>    }
>
>
> Does that sound right?
>
> Cheers, Andrew.
>
>
>
>
--
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Hilmar Lapp                            email: lapp at gnf.org
GNF, San Diego, Ca. 92121              phone: +1-858-812-1757
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