Computational Biology: Unix Linux, Data Processing and Programming

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 283 pages
• Published by: Springer
• Edition: 1st Edition May 27, 2004
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 354021142X
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-3540211426
• Book Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Weighs: 1.2 pounds

Product Review


From the reviews:

"This book is a practical introduction to Unix/Linux and programming for biologists … . The goal is to learn about the power of … . It is written for beginners with no computational knowledge. Basic programming constructs are introduced and applied. With this book, the reader will be able to work in the Unix … and to write programs in order to format and analyse large data files. This book was written for graduate students, professional, researchers as well as libraries." (Bio World, Issue no. 6, 2004)

Product Description


This book is a practical introduction to Unix/Linux and programming for biologists as well as for chemists and physicists who work in bioinformatics and biophysics. The goal is to learn about the power of the stream editor 'sed' and the programming languages 'awk' and 'perl' in order to extract or format information from various sources. It is written for beginners with no computational knowledge. Basic programming constructs are introduced and applied. With this book, the reader will be able to work in the Unix environment (BSD, Linux, Knoppix, MacOSX, CygWin) and to write programs in order to format and analyse large data files.

Reader Reviews
A straightforward little book. Essentially a unix text about sed, awk and Perl. Ostensibly, it has to do with computational biology and the parsing of the various common data formats in that field. But a perusal of the book shows that the scope is more general. The biology formats are used as case studies. If you are in high energy physics, for example, and you have accelerator data in some other format, the book might still be of use in helping you parse out what you need. The sed and awk discussions could have be written ten years or more ago. Those programs have been very stable. Whereas Perl has undergone relatively rapid changes. In fact, as the book indicates, Perl is far more powerful than sed or awk. It is a fully fledged programming language that can take you some time to master. The book doesn't give a comprehensive coverage of Perl's abilities. But for the expected reader, it may suffice.