What makes Perl so useful for bioinformatics is that there are so many bioinformatics (and scientific) extensions and modules for Perl.
Benefits for Perl include:
- For researchers and scientists not very experienced with programming, as they can easily pick up Perl and get their desired task(s) accomplished
- In a great many cases, the language’s design and abilities make it an almost perfect fit for the job.
All these make Perl a good contender for scientific research, especially in fields where the data to process is mostly in text format. There are lots of pre-existing scripts to use, including Bio-Perl, which is an international open-source collaboration of biologists, bioinformaticians, and computer scientists that has evolved over the past 7 yr into the most comprehensive library of Perl modules available for managing and manipulating life-science information. Bioperl provides an easy-to-use, stable, and consistent programming interface for bioinformatics application programmers. The Bioperl modules have been successfully and repeatedly used to reduce otherwise complex tasks to only a few lines of code.
We at RASA life science informatics conduct the Perl and BioPerl training program is to train students/ professionals in becoming a Perl programmer. At the end of the Perl training course, participants will have a good working knowledge of the Perl programming language and ability to develop the Perl Scripts which will help them to channelize their work. RASA’s training program is highly raked in India and we have till date trained more than 1000 students.
