RFE: start/end for atomspec numerical ranges (or asterisk to mean them)

[Elaine Meng]

For command-line atomspecs, would be great if the words "start" and "end" and/or asterisk before or after hyphen could mean the first and last number available in the structure. Generally this is used only for residue numbers.

Chimera uses the words, not asterisks. I'd be happy with whichever is simpler to implement. If words, I lean towards using the same words as Chimera, but I'm not militant if you really prefer something else like "first" and "last".

[Conrad Huang]

Added support for "start" and "end" in residue ranges. Model ranges not implemented yet.

[Elaine Meng]

Tests suggest “start” is working, but something wonky is going on with “end”… seems to get a bunch of extra residues:

open 1gcn
color :15-end purple
close

open 2gbp
label :150
color :150-end purple

[Conrad Huang]

Fixed in 8d2acd142.

Code was using residue atomspec as both type AND number+insert code. So residues that are alphabetically between "150" and "end" were selected as well. Now the type test is only used if the residue atomspec does NOT look like number+insert code.

[Elaine Meng]

Still not implemented for model numbers, e.g.

open 1g1p
select #1.10-end

[Conrad Huang]

Fixed in 987564593.

Looks like "*" used to work. Fixed to use only "start" and "end" to match residue range syntax.

[Elaine Meng]

I’m hoping * would still work to signify all (not start and end) as in the last wildcard example,   #*.1-3

http://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/atomspec.html#wildcards

If not, I suppose the workaround is  #start-end.1-3
 

[Conrad Huang]

I first made the change to allow '*' as a model number wildcard, but the error message was really confusing when I tried #1.4-*. So I made '*' acceptable as either "start" or "end" as well. Now all these work:

color #start-end.start-3 red
color #*.start-3 red
color #*.*-3 red
color #*.4-end red
color #*.4-* red
color #*.1-3 red

[Elaine Meng]

Looks good -- seems OK to close this ticket.