Mike Robeson wrote: > > Hello, Hello,
> I am a relatively new PERL beginner and have been trying to work with > simple bioinformatics stuff. I have so far written some very useful but > simple bioinformatics scripts. However.... recently I have been trying > to work on a script to no avail. I have a text file whose contents are: > > >dog > agatagatcgcatcga > >cat > acgcttcgatacgctagctta > >mouse > agatatacgggt > > .... and so on... > > I would like to turn that into this: > > a g a t a g a t c g c a t c g a - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > dog > a c g c t t c g a t a c g c t a g c t t a - - - - - - - - - - > cat > a g a t a t a c g g g t t - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > mouse > > Notice that the sequence of letters varies however I need the lines in > the newly formed file to be equal in length by adding the appropriate > amount of dashes. For those in the know I am trying to convert a FASTA > file into a DCSE file. > > I have been beating my head for the past 2 weeks and I cannot figure > out how to do this. I do not expect a complete answer (I would like to > try figuring this out on my own as much as possible) but rather some > guidance. Any detailed pseudo-code would be appreciated!! According to your data this should work: #!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; my $len = 30; # pad out to this length while ( <DATA> ) { unless ( s/^\s*>// ) { chomp; my @char = ( split( // ), ( '-' ) x ( $len - length ) ); $_ = "@char\n"; } print; } __DATA__ >dog agatagatcgcatcga >cat acgcttcgatacgctagctta >mouse agatatacgggt John -- use Perl; program fulfillment -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]