[Bioperl-l] new_fast methods

[Albert Vilella]

Hi,

I would like to ask for comments to the list on the convenience of
having "new_fast" methods in Bioperl.
If one does some profiling on Bioperl scripts that parse large
quantities of data, the "_rearrange" method stands out as a possible
easy point of optimization. There are parts of the code that call the
new method with explicit options. See for example:

We should be able to create a "new_fast" method for this cases that
takes the ordering as given and doesn't call "_rearrange". This
wouldn't disrupt existing code that still calls "new".

Comments?

Bio/Seq/SeqWithQuality.pm

   if (!$seq) {
      my $id;
      unless ($self->{supress_warnings} == 1) {
         $self->warn("You did not provide sequence information during the ".
           "construction of a Bio::Seq::SeqWithQuality object. Sequence ".
           "components for this object will be empty.");
      }
      if (!$alphabet) {
         $self->throw("If you want me to create a PrimarySeq object for your ".
           "empty sequence <boggle> you must specify a -alphabet to satisfy ".
           "the constructor requirements for a Bio::PrimarySeq object with no ".
           "sequence. Read the POD for it, luke.");
      }
      $self->{seq_ref} = Bio::PrimarySeq->new( -seq              =>  "",
                                               -accession_number =>  $acc,
                                               -primary_id       =>  $pid,
                                               -desc             =>  $desc,
                                               -display_id       =>  $id,
                                               -alphabet         =>
$alphabet );
   } elsif ($seq->isa('Bio::PrimarySeqI') || $seq->isa('Bio::SeqI')) {
      $self->{seq_ref} = $seq;
   } elsif (ref($seq)) {
      $self->throw("You passed a seq argument into a SeqWithQUality object and".
        " it was a reference ($seq) which did not inherit from Bio::SeqI or ".
        "Bio::PrimarySeqI. I don't know what to do with this!");
   } else {
      my $seqobj = Bio::PrimarySeq->new( -seq              => $seq,
                                         -accession_number => $acc,
                                         -primary_id       => $pid,
                                         -desc             => $desc,
                                         -display_id       => $id   );
      $self->{seq_ref} = $seqobj;
   }
   # Then import the quality scores
   if (!defined($qual)) {
      $self->{qual_ref} = Bio::Seq::PrimaryQual->new( -qual             => "",
                                                      -accession_number => $acc,
                                                      -primary_id       => $pid,
                                                      -desc
 => $desc,
                                                      -display_id
 => $id, );
   } elsif (ref($qual) eq "Bio::Seq::PrimaryQual") {
      $self->{qual_ref} = $qual;
   } else {
      my $qualobj = Bio::Seq::PrimaryQual->new( -qual             => $qual,
                                                -accession_number => $acc,
                                                -primary_id       => $pid,
                                                -desc             => $desc,
                                                -display_id       => $id,
                                                -trace_indices    =>
$trace_indices );
      $self->{qual_ref} = $qualobj;
   }