[Bioperl-l] How to get rid of warnings

[Hilmar Lapp]

On Aug 19, 2006, at 2:07 PM, Sendu Bala wrote:

> Like I say, you have to have a default of undef and set the value to
> undef to turn the feature off, which doesn't seem very nice to me.

Why? Typically a value of undef for a property (class or instance- 
level) means it hasn't been set.

This is used all over the place, and I'm sure not just in bioperl.

>
> I'd prefer to be able to chose a global verbosity level and
> independently turn global behaviour on and off by supplying a method a
> boolean or even the words 'on'|'off', not supplying int or undef.

You can do that too but I'm not sure about how much would be gained.  
If I want to globally alter the verbosity, I will usually know why  
and therefore to which level. I'm not sure how often the situation  
would occur that I want to globally change the verbosity level,  
whatever the system may think that should be. Typically I will want  
to dictate the level too, not just switching it 'on' regardless of  
what the system thinks I may mean by 'on'.

The only situation where just 'switching on' may apply is inside of a  
module. However, if a module wants to do this then I'm strongly  
inclined to think that something more fundamental is wrong. Changing  
verbosity level globally should only be a client's (user's) decision,  
never that of a module author.

	-hilmar
-- 
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: Hilmar Lapp  -:-  Durham, NC  -:-  hlapp at gmx dot net :
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