[Bioperl-l] Test related Suggestions

[Nathan S. Haigh]

Quoting Chris Fields <cjfields at uiuc.edu>:

> 
> On Jul 5, 2007, at 8:12 AM, Heikki Lehvaslaiho wrote:
> 
> >
> > One more suggestion:
> >
> > It would be extemaly useful if we had a standard way of testing  
> > that a when a
> > file is read into a bioperl object and then written out again into  
> > a same
> > format, the input and output files are identical. If not, the test  
> > should
> > show where the the differences start (showing all the differences  
> > would just
> > clutter the screen).
> >
> > This standard method/subroutine should be used to test all sequence  
> > and other
> > text file IO.
> >
> > Any takers?
> >
> > 	-Heikki
> ...
> 
> I agree.  There are some 'round-trip' tests with genbank.t or SeqIO.t  
> that do some checking, I think, but something like this would be of  
> use.  However, what if the test file is old (as many in t/data are)  
> and the format has changed?  GenBank and EMBL, for instance, have  
> gone through several changes to format.
> 
> chris
> 
> 

Is there any way to distinguish variants apart other than just layout? e.g. a version number of the likes?

Nath