[Bioperl-l] How to get rid of warnings

[Chris Fields]

On Aug 20, 2006, at 2:10 AM, Sendu Bala wrote:

> Hilmar Lapp wrote:
>>
>> 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.
>
> Yes, but very very rarely are you ever required to deliberately pass
> 'undef' as a value to a method in order to do something. Because  
> that's
> quite a horrible thing to do.

Why is that?  What dictum of developer ethics dictates that we should  
never pass undef?  I believe this is a perfectly valid (and widely  
used) way to unset a get/set.

This is your opinion, Sendu. It is not a fact.  Please remember that.
...

Christopher Fields
Postdoctoral Researcher
Lab of Dr. Robert Switzer
Dept of Biochemistry
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign