[Bioperl-l] bioperl-db

[Aaron J Mackey]

On Wed, 13 Mar 2002, Chris Mungall wrote:

> In fact, check out how fast 100,000 lines of perl parses. Is genbank
> syntax really gnarlier than perl syntax? Does anyone know how the perl
> compiler works - does it use the perl regexp engine?

Nope; it uses a very intricate, very optimized lex/yacc grammar.  See
perly.y and friends in the perl source code.

> Also, now that all these hardcore perl gurus are trying to get in on the
> bioinformatics game maybe we could turn that to our advantage....?

I think most of the hardcore perl guru's are already in the game (e.g.
Lincoln); or said another way, we already have quite a few people who can
slice and dice in any language (C/Perl/Java).  It's the softcore, "all I
need are some O'Reilly books and to read Slashdot and I'm ready to solve
the world's bioinformatics problems for those poor driveling biologists"
perl wannabe's that are joining the game that are driving me up the wall.

Ahh, nice to get that off my chest ;)

-Aaron