What are the problems that might arise when dividing program code into separate module files?
Exercise 1.2
What are the differences between libraries, modules, packages, and namespaces?
Exercise 1.3
Write a module that finds modules on your computer.
Exercise 1.4
Where do the standard Perl distribution modules live on your computer?
Exercise 1.5
Research how Perl manages its namespaces.
Exercise 1.6
When might it be necessary to export names from a module? When might it be useful? When might it be convenient ? When might it be a very bad idea?
Exercise 1.7
The program testGeneticcode contains the following loop:
# Translate each three-base codon to an amino acid, and append to a protein for(my $i=0; $i < (length($dna) - 2) ; $i += 3) { $protein .= Geneticcode::codon2aa( substr($dna,$i,3) ); }
Here's another way to accomplish that loop:
# Translate each three-base codon to an amino acid, and append to a protein my $i=0; while (my $codon = substr($dna, $i += 3, 3) ) { $protein .= Geneticcode::codon2aa( $codon ); }
Compare the two methods . Which is easier to understand? Which is easier to maintain? Which is faster? Why?
Exercise 1.8
The subroutine codon2aa causes the entire program to halt when it encounters a "bad" codon in the data. Often (usually) it is best for a subroutine to return some indication that it encountered a problem and let the calling program decide how to handle it. It makes the subroutine more generally useful if it isn't always halting the program (although that is what you want to do sometimes).
Rewrite codon2aa and the calling program testGeneticcode so that the subroutine returns some error ”perhaps the value undef ”and the calling program checks for that error and performs some action.
Exercise 1.9
Write a separate module for each of the following: reading a file, extracting FASTA sequence data, and printing sequence data to the screen.
