While or not to While that is the question :)
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg46839] While or not to While that is the question :)
- From: János <janos.lobb at yale.edu>
- Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2004 19:57:58 -0500 (EST)
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Hi, Inside a While loop I slide on a nested list like {a,{g,c},{t,a},c,g,a,{g,c},{a,t},c,,g,a,t,t}. Let's say I start after {t,a} and {a,t} parallel - positions 4 and 9, that is element c and c. If I find a single element then I pair it with its corresponding DNA complement, a->t, t->a, c->g, g->c and replace the element with a sublist of the element and its complement. So, after the first step my list will look like {a,{g,c},{t,a},{c,g},g,a,{g,c},{a,t},{c,g},g,a,t,t}. If I find a double, like the {g,c} on position 7, then first I create a triplet from it {g,c,c} - the original c in the double is now on the third position inside the triplet -, and then after some housekeeping I take the third element of the triplet off and put it into another bucket, so the triplet becomes a double again and in the While I slide happily further right on the nested list. In the above example I would hit {g,c} after 4 steps. If I run the While, let say for 5 or more steps, it errors out complaining that I want to select some parts of the empty {} list. If I ran it for 4 steps and then I manually execute ALL the statements inside the While for step 5, I do not see any complains and I can go up to as many steps manually, by increasing the loop variable, as my heart desires. As being a newbie I have not learned yet to use Modules or Blocks , - I am still just at page 320 in the book - so all my variables are globals. So my first question is why I am getting different results if I execute the while programatically, for 5 steps, compared to executing it for 4 steps and do the 5th step manually? I am using 5.0.1 on OS X. The first error message I get is this: \!\(\* RowBox[{\(ReplacePart::"partw"\), \(\(:\)\(\ \)\), "\<\"Part \\!\\({1, 2}\\) of \\!\\({}\\) does not exist. \\!\\(\\*ButtonBox[\\\"More?\\\", \ ButtonStyle->\\\"RefGuideLinkText\\\", ButtonFrame->None, \ ButtonData:>\\\"General::partw\\\"]\\)\"\>"}]\) So, my second question is how to use Trace to determine where in the code do I get the first "partw" ? I use ReplacePart in 4 places inside the While, but at manual execution none of them complain. I am sure my code is far from perfect, but still it should give the same result on both cases. János ------------------------------------------------- clear perl code is better than unclear awk code; but NOTHING comes close to unclear perl code http://www.faqs.org/faqs/computer-lang/awk/faq/