[Biococoa-dev] BCSequence class cluster? [Was Re: Introducing myself]

Charles Parnot charles.parnot at gmail.com
Sun Mar 1 00:33:25 EST 2009


Hi Scott,

Thanks for all the good points!

> * I think the mutable sequence is useful.  It isn't very common  
> though as typically sequence data is considered to be ground truth  
> but I think it will become more so as people start doing in silico  
> experimentation, asking "what if" questions when the sequence is  
> mutated.  This can be tricky to handle efficiently, but maybe we  
> would want to design the interface around the biological, i.e. SNPs,  
> insertions, deletions, inversions, duplications, etc.

Yes, a mutable sequence is definitely very useful.

But an immutable sequence is also very useful. Knowning that a  
sequence does not change allows for many optimizations and makes  
thread-safety much easier.

Thus, it is good to have both, which I supposed is anyway what you  
gave in mind. FWIW, if I had to choose to choose only 1, it would be  
the immutable class. But there is no reason to stick to just 1 class.  
NSString/NSMutableString, NSArray/NSMutableArray, NSDIcitonary/ 
NSMutableDictionary, etc... all exist for a reason :-)

charles

--
OpenMacGrid
Help science move fast forward:
http://www.macresearch.org/openmacgrid

Charles Parnot
charles.parnot at gmail.com









More information about the Biococoa-dev mailing list