[Bioperl-l] Problems with Bio::SearchIO

[Sendu Bala]

Chris Fields wrote:
> 
> On Nov 10, 2008, at 4:29 PM, Dan Bolser wrote:
> 
>> 2008/11/7 Chris Fields <cjfields at illinois.edu>:
>>> On Nov 7, 2008, at 8:27 AM, Dan Bolser wrote:
>>>> ...
>>>> Looking closer I found that $parser->result_count() only gets set
>>>> after calling $parser->next_result. Any way to force this? In some
>>>> Perl objects I've seen a 'parse' method that kicks the object into
>>>> (silently) calling all its get methods. Is there an equivalent (but
>>>> apparently undocumented) method? Actually, I think it should kick
>>>> itself when called... or not? Certainly the docs do not suggest that
>>>> is won't return a the number of results ("Function: Gets the number of
>>>> Blast results that have been parsed.") So I think this is a bug.
>>>
>>> We could make it so that the result_count() is eager (parses the 
>>> results and
>>> reports the total back).  Not sure, but we could optionally cache the
>>> already-parsed Result objects (that could run into memory issues if 
>>> one is
>>> parsing a ton of reports, so it needs to be off by default).
>>
>> I see (I think). Anyone first calling result_count() and *then*
>> iterating over the results is getting a performance hit by effectively
>> parsing the results twice? I would suggest that you make this function
>> eager, but document the potential performance issue so that people can
>> choose not to call it first. However, I don't think I can have
>> understood correctly. How can its value be set correctly after calling
>> next() only once?
> 
> It's highly possible that result_count() is meant to indicate total 
> ResultI iteration parsed up to the point of being called (as opposed to 
> the total number of ResultI), but that isn't made exactly clear.  

Yes, this is the case. I always thought that was pretty unambiguous from 
the function description. "the number of Blast results that have been 
parsed". Not "the number of Blast results".