How do I change this to “idiomatic” Perl?

Question

I am beginning to delve deeper into Perl, but am having trouble writing \"Perl-ly\" code instead of writing C in Perl. How can I change the following code to use more Perl idiom

Answer 1

One simple change is to use for loops like this:

for my $i (0 .. $num_of_rows){
    # Do stuff.
}

For more info, see the Perl documentation on foreach loops and the range operator.

Answer 2

I have some other comments as well, but here is the first observation:

my $num_of_rows = length($self->{seq1}) + 1;
my $num_of_columns = length($self->{seq2}) + 1;

So $self->{seq1} and $self->{seq2} are strings and you keep accessing individual elements using substr. I would prefer to store them as arrays of characters:

$self->{seq1} = [ split //, $seq1 ];

Here is how I would have written it:

sub create_matrix {
    my $self = shift;

    my $matrix      = $self->{score_matrix};
    my $path_matrix = $self->{path_matrix};

    my $rows = @{ $self->{seq1} };
    my $cols = @{ $self->{seq2} };

    for my $row (0 .. $rows) {
        $matrix->[$row]->[0] =  $row * $self->{gap_cost};
        $path_matrix->[$row]->[0] = 1;
    }

    my $gap_cost = $self->{gap_cost};

    $matrix->[0] = [ map { $_ * $gap_cost } 0 .. $cols ];
    $path_matrix->[0] = [ (-1) x ($cols + 1) ];

    $path_matrix->[0]->[0] = 2;

    for my $row (1 .. $rows) {
        for my $col (1 .. $cols) {
            my $gap1 = $matrix->[$row - 1]->[$col] + $gap_cost;
            my $gap2 = $matrix->[$row]->[$col - 1] + $gap_cost;
            my $match_mismatch =
                $matrix->[$row - 1]->[$col - 1] +
                $self->get_match_score(
                    $self->{seq1}->[$row - 1],
                    $self->{seq2}->[$col - 1]
                );

            my $max = $matrix->[$row]->[$col] =
                max($gap1, $gap2, $match_mismatch);

            $path_matrix->[$row]->[$col] = $max == $gap1
                    ? -1
                    : $max == $gap2
                    ? 1
                    : 0;
            }
        }
    }

Answer 3

You're getting several suggestions regarding syntax, but I would also suggest a more modular approach, if for no other reason that code readability. It's much easier to come up to speed on code if you can perceive the big picture before worrying about low-level details.

Your primary method might look like this.

sub create_matrix {
    my $self = shift;
    $self->create_2d_array_of_scores;
    $self->fill_out_first_row;
    $self->fill_out_other_rows;
}

And you would also have several smaller methods like this:

n_of_rows
n_of_cols
create_2d_array_of_scores
fill_out_first_row
fill_out_other_rows

And you might take it even further by defining even smaller methods -- getters, setters, and so forth. At that point, your middle-level methods like create_2d_array_of_scores would not directly touch the underlying data structure at all.

sub matrix      { shift->{score_matrix} }
sub gap_cost    { shift->{gap_cost}     }

sub set_matrix_value {
    my ($self, $r, $c, $val) = @_;
    $self->matrix->[$r][$c] = $val;
}

# Etc.

Answer 4

The majority of your code is manipulating 2D arrays. I think the biggest improvement would be switching to using PDL if you want to do much stuff with arrays, particularly if efficiency is a concern. It's a Perl module which provides excellent array support. The underlying routines are implemented in C for efficiency so it's fast too.

Answer 5

Instead of dereferencing your two-dimensional arrays like this:

$$path_matrix[0][0] = 2;

do this:

$path_matrix->[0][0] = 2;

Also, you're doing a lot of if/then/else statements to match against particular subsequences: this could be better written as given statements (perl5.10's equivalent of C's switch). Read about it at perldoc perlsyn:

given ($matrix->[$row][$column])
{
    when ($seq1_gap)       { $path_matrix->[$row][$column] = -1; }
    when ($match_mismatch) { $path_matrix->[$row][$column] = 0; }
    when ($seq2_gap)       { $path_matrix->[$row][$column] = 1; }
}

Answer 6

I would always advise to look at CPAN for previous solutions or examples of how to do things in Perl. Have you looked at Algorithm::NeedlemanWunsch?

The documentation to this module includes an example for matching DNA sequences. Here is an example using the similarity matrix from wikipedia.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use warnings;
use Inline::Files;                 #multiple virtual files inside code
use Algorithm::NeedlemanWunsch;    # refer CPAN - good style guide

# Read DNA sequences
my @a = read_DNA_seq("DNA_SEQ_A");
my @b = read_DNA_seq("DNA_SEQ_B");

# Read Similarity Matrix (held as a Hash of Hashes)
my %SM = read_Sim_Matrix();

# Define scoring based on "Similarity Matrix" %SM
sub score_sub {
    if ( !@_ ) {
        return -3;                 # gap penalty same as wikipedia)
    }
    return $SM{ $_[0] }{ $_[1] };    # Similarity Value matrix
}

my $matcher = Algorithm::NeedlemanWunsch->new( \&score_sub, -3 );
my $score = $matcher->align( \@a, \@b, { align => \&check_align, } );

print "\nThe maximum score is $score\n";

sub check_align {
    my ( $i, $j ) = @_;              # @a[i], @b[j]
    print "seqA pos: $i, seqB pos: $j\t base \'$a[$i]\'\n";
}

sub read_DNA_seq {
    my $source = shift;
    my @data;
    while (<$source>) {
        push @data, /[ACGT-]{1}/g;
    }
    return @data;
}

sub read_Sim_Matrix {

    #Read DNA similarity matrix (scores per Wikipedia)
    my ( @AoA, %HoH );
    while (<SIMILARITY_MATRIX>) {
        push @AoA, [/(\S+)+/g];
    }

    for ( my $row = 1 ; $row < 5 ; $row++ ) {
        for ( my $col = 1 ; $col < 5 ; $col++ ) {
            $HoH{ $AoA[0][$col] }{ $AoA[$row][0] } = $AoA[$row][$col];
        }
    }
    return %HoH;
}

__DNA_SEQ_A__
A T G T A G T G T A T A G T
A C A T G C A
__DNA_SEQ_B__
A T G T A G T A C A T G C A
__SIMILARITY_MATRIX__
-  A  G  C  T
A  10  -1  -3  -4
G  -1  7  -5  -3
C  -3  -5  9  0
T  -4  -3  0  8

And here is some sample output:

seqA pos: 7, seqB pos: 2  base 'G'
seqA pos: 6, seqB pos: 1  base 'T'
seqA pos: 4, seqB pos: 0  base 'A'

The maximum score is 100