BrowserUk:
Thanks!
Yes, this method breaks down pretty quickly when the criteria are relaxed much. But I found a nifty variation that's a little bit more flexible (and still very limited): Rather than replace the character with an asterisk, we can remove the character entirely. That way, not only will it match a single wildcard position, but would allow it to find some two-character differences (such as a character deleted or inserted in two different locations). I need to find a simple way to group the replicated matches before I'm happy with it.
I'm still playing around with it, but I'm at work and need to get stuff done. So I'm posting what I have so far, just in case I never get back around to it:
$ cat 937249.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my %H;
open my $FH, '<', 'DNA_strings.dat' or die $!;
while (<$FH>) {
next if /^\s*(#.*)?$/;
s/\s+$//;
for my $i (0 .. length($_)-1) {
my $k = $_;
substr($k,$i,1) = '';
$H{$k}{$_}++;
}
}
for my $k (sort keys %H) {
if (keys %{$H{$k}} > 1) {
print "$k\t", join("\n\t\t", keys %{$H{$k}}), "\n";
}
}
$ cat DNA_strings.dat
# Add a random character to GTTAACCGGA in various positions
GTxTAACCGGA
GTTAAyCCGGA
GTTAACCGzGA
# Delete a random character from GAGGGTGATC in various positions
GAGGGTGAT
GAGGGTGTC
GAGGTGATC
AGGGTGATC
GCAATTTGTC
GCAAATTGTC
GCAATTGGTC
GTTTATAAGT
TGGACAAGCT
TCAGCGGATC
CTACATAACT
TTACTTCAGG
CGGACCTTGG
TGCGTGTGAC
$ perl 937249.pl
AGGGTGAT GAGGGTGAT
AGGGTGATC
AGGGTGTC GAGGGTGTC
AGGGTGATC
AGGTGATC AGGGTGATC
GAGGTGATC
GAGGGTGT GAGGGTGAT
GAGGGTGTC
GAGGTGAT GAGGGTGAT
GAGGTGATC
GAGGTGTC GAGGGTGTC
GAGGTGATC
GCAATTGTC GCAATTTGTC
GCAATTGGTC
GCAAATTGTC
GGGTGATC AGGGTGATC
GAGGTGATC
GTTAACCGGA GTTAAyCCGGA
GTxTAACCGGA
GTTAACCGzGA
I'd like to eliminate the duplicate groups, probably by building another hash from the original results. But I haven't figured out a nice way to do so yet.
...roboticus
When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.
Update: Minor formatting & text update. |