[Biococoa-dev] BCSymbolSet

Koen van der Drift kvddrift at earthlink.net
Thu Mar 10 21:13:34 EST 2005


On Mar 10, 2005, at 4:44 PM, Alexander Griekspoor wrote:

> On 10-mrt-05, at 22:37, Charles PARNOT wrote:
>
>> At 21:55 +0100 3/10/05, Alexander Griekspoor wrote:
>>> Oh, sorry, I missed parts of the symbolset discussion, but I thought 
>>> I remember having read a strong advocacy (John ?) for a non-mutable 
>>> symbolset...
>>> Never mind...
>>> Alex
>>>
>>
>> sorry, very short:
>>
>> * the user should not be able to modify a prebuilt symbol set   [John 
>> (and me agree)]
> Yep, same here.

Me too.


>
>> * One should not be able to change the symbolSet of a sequence, that 
>> would be disastrous [me]
> Me too, but perhaps you CAN add symbols (like ambiguity to a perfect 
> ATCG sequence), but certainly not remove one.

Me three for the first part. However if the user wants to change the 
symbolset, maybe to include ambiguity, I think that she should create a 
new sequence, not change the symbolset. One reason could be, suppose 
the user wants to undo the change, that will be impossible if you can 
only add, but not remove symbols from a set.


>> * all the arguments that usually apply in the mutable vs immutable 
>> design, with the added fact that symbol sets are small and thus easy 
>> to copy [me; also applies to sequences]
> Yes, I think you have a point. Say you want to merge two sets, it's 
> just as easy (or maybe easier) to get the merge than to add the 
> symbols of one to the other...

Me agrees.

- Koen.






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