built in function for computing overlap in Python

Question

is there a built in function to compute the overlap between two discrete intervals, e.g. the overlap between [10, 15] and [20, 38]? In that case the overlap is 0. If it\'s

Answer 1

Here is a good function from Aaron Quinlan's chrom_sweep, modified for your interval representation. It returns the number of bp of overlap if they do overlap, otherwise it returns the distance as a negative int.

def overlaps(a, b):
    """
    Return the amount of overlap, in bp
    between a and b.
    If >0, the number of bp of overlap
    If 0,  they are book-ended.
    If <0, the distance in bp between them
    """

    return min(a[1], b[1]) - max(a[0], b[0])