[Bioperl-l] rank in bioperl-db PersistentObjectI

[Michael Thon]

I've been getting an 'Use of uninitialized value in numeric gt (>)
at...' error in a script that I'm writing to load annotations into
Bio::Seq objects that already exist in a bioperl-db database.  The error
is coming from the line:
        foreach (@anns) { $r = $_->rank if $_->rank > $r; }
from the file:
bioperl-db/scripts/biosql/merge-unique-ann.pl

Actually, I copied this subroutine into a custom script that I'm writing
to move data from another db into a bioperl-db.  
I think the problem is that some previously loaded annotations have no
rank and $r is being set to undef sometimes

I could modify the subroutine or I could ensure that all of my
annotations have a rank before they are inserted into the database.  I'm
not sure what rank is used for at this point so I'm not sure if can
safely ignore it and remove all assignment of rank in all of my
annotations