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[Bioc-devel] SummarizedExperiments

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 5:56 PM, Tim Triche, Jr. <tim.triche at gmail.com> wrote:
Zero'th, regarding sampleNames etc.  Well, I believe we have so much
documentation and usage for those three methods (sampleNames,
featureNames and pData) that we should keep them.  Especially pData.

Now, to the subsetting

First, I believe we should certainly implement subsetBy/findOverlaps
for SummarizedExperiments.  It is pretty straightforward.

Second, your issue here is not so much about SummarizedExperiments as
it is about GRanges in general.  You could use the exact same argument
for why we should be about to do something like
  gr1[gr2]
and have that be
  subsetByOverlaps(gr1, gr2)

I can see the use of this type of subsetting - like Tim, I do it all
the time.  The pro is that it is short notation and it seems natural.
The con is that subsetByOverlaps takes additional arguments and what
should we do with those (put them in ... of the method?) And there may
be additional issues with '[' which sometimes is a bit tricky.
Perhaps all of this was considered and decided against when
subsetBYOverlaps was introduced.

Personally, I think this may be nice, but I am not unhappy with
subsetByOverlaps.

Kasper