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    <p>Hi Asier</p>
    <p>It's great to hear that you've devised a fix. We would welcome a
      PR against master, or to see your changes, whichever you'd prefer.
      We'll be able to look at it in the next few days.<br>
    </p>
    <p>Best<br>
      -Brandon<br>
    </p>
    <div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 26/06/2019 11:03, Asier Gonzalez
      wrote:<br>
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    <blockquote type="cite"
      cite="mid:af0f2e81-0841-9f50-f5c0-01d9388d8c29@ebi.ac.uk">
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      <p>Hi Brandon,</p>
      <p>Thank you for your response. Do you have an idea of when it
        could be fixed? I mean, are we talking about weeks or months? I
        use a tool that calls this function at least every two months so
        I have amended the code to do what I believe it is supposed to
        do. I could share it with you if it would help you, or I could
        open a PR if you accept them. I understand that you may have
        other priorities, but at least I want to make sure that the
        future version will do what mine already does.</p>
      <p>Best wishes,<br>
        Asier<br>
      </p>
      <div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 26/06/2019 10:56, Brandon Walts
        wrote:<br>
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      <blockquote type="cite"
        cite="mid:622c5207-60a9-136a-f420-c66c1e960068@ebi.ac.uk">
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        <p>Hi Asier</p>
        <p>We've had a chance to look into it and you are correct, this
          function is not working as described. As currently
          implemented, it will return more results than expected. It's
          on our list to fix, and we plan to get to it in the near
          future.</p>
        <p>Best<br>
          -Brandon<br>
        </p>
        <div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 26/06/2019 09:51, Asier Gonzalez
          wrote:<br>
        </div>
        <blockquote type="cite"
          cite="mid:25469e48-d7ce-4e0c-69cb-db527f7c5331@ebi.ac.uk">
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          <p>Hi Brandon,</p>
          <p>Do you have any updates about this?</p>
          <p>Thanks,<br>
            Asier<br>
          </p>
          <div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 07/06/2019 16:42, Brandon
            Walts wrote:<br>
          </div>
          <blockquote type="cite"
            cite="mid:66af20b2-39e9-701b-d208-f45fbcdc7e23@ebi.ac.uk">
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            <p>Hi Asier</p>
            <p>Thanks for bringing this up. We will look into what's
              going on and see if there is a bug, if the documentation
              needs improvement, or both.</p>
            <p>Best<br>
              -Brandon<br>
            </p>
            <div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 07/06/2019 13:47, Asier
              Gonzalez wrote:<br>
            </div>
            <blockquote type="cite"
              cite="mid:a7228afe-5355-bd36-8a93-7617f98e4eff@ebi.ac.uk">
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              <p>Hi all,</p>
              <p>I'm troubleshooting a Perl tool that calls the Ensembl
                API with a variant id and tries to find the gene with
                the closest 5' end within a 500 kb window. The tool was
                written by a colleague and it uses
                Bio::EnsEMBL::DBSQL::BaseFeatureAdaptor::fetch_all_by_outward_search()
                like this:</p>
              <pre style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000;font-family:'Menlo';font-size:9.0pt;"><span style="color:#000080;font-weight:bold;">my </span>@gene_list_for_feature  = @{$gene_adaptor->fetch_all_by_outward_search( 
                                                   -FEATURE => $var_feature,
                                                   -RANGE => <span style="color:#0000ff;">10000</span>,
                                                   -MAX_RANGE => <span style="color:#0000ff;">500000</span>,
                                                   -LIMIT => <span style="color:#0000ff;">40</span>,
                                                   -FIVE_PRIME => <span style="color:#0000ff;">1</span>)};</pre>
              <p>According to the documentation of this function (<a
                  class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.ensembl.org/info/docs/Doxygen/core-api/classBio_1_1EnsEMBL_1_1DBSQL_1_1BaseFeatureAdaptor.html#a76a51bc70828aaccb9435eda9a44b20a"
                  moz-do-not-send="true">http://www.ensembl.org/info/docs/Doxygen/core-api/classBio_1_1EnsEMBL_1_1DBSQL_1_1BaseFeatureAdaptor.html#a76a51bc70828aaccb9435eda9a44b20a</a>),
                it "Searches for features within the suggested -RANGE,
                and if it finds none, expands the search area until it
                satisfies -LIMIT or hits -MAX_RANGE". My understanding
                is that in my case it should search first in a 10 kb
                window and, if there are no genes, progressively expand
                it to up to 500 kb unless it finds 40 features before.
                However, this is not the behaviour I am seeing, the
                search range grows like this: 10k, 20k, 60k, 240k and
                1.20M. Is this a bug or have I misundertood what it
                does?</p>
              <p>I have looked into the code of this subroutine (<a
                  moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://github.com/Ensembl/ensembl/blob/release/96/modules/Bio/EnsEMBL/DBSQL/BaseFeatureAdaptor.pm#L1441-L1469">https://github.com/Ensembl/ensembl/blob/release/96/modules/Bio/EnsEMBL/DBSQL/BaseFeatureAdaptor.pm#L1441-L1469</a>)
                and the search window growths exponentially because it
                multiplies the previous value instead of the initial
                value:</p>
              <p><span class="pl-smi">[L1452] $search_range</span> = <span
                  class="pl-smi">$search_range</span> * <span
                  class="pl-smi">$factor</span>;</p>
              <p>In addition, it is not true that it only expands the
                range if it does not find any features in the initial
                window, which is obvious from looking into the while
                statement:</p>
              <p>[L1451] <span class="pl-k">while</span> (<span
                  class="pl-c1">scalar</span> <span class="pl-smi">@results</span>
                < <span class="pl-smi">$limit</span> && <span
                  class="pl-smi">$search_range</span> <= <span
                  class="pl-smi">$max_range</span>) {</p>
              <p>I am also confused by the fact that, apparently, the
                found features only need to be partially within the
                range. For instance, ENSG00000150394 (CDH8) is found
                with the above parameters although its 5' prime end is
                1,338,771 bp away from the variant according to the
                distance reported by the function. So, it seems that the
                feature is found because its 3' end is within the range
                although the 5' prime end, which is what I am interested
                in, is not. This somehow contradicts what the
                documentation says (<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://github.com/Ensembl/ensembl/blob/release/96/modules/Bio/EnsEMBL/DBSQL/BaseFeatureAdaptor.pm#L1490-L1491">https://github.com/Ensembl/ensembl/blob/release/96/modules/Bio/EnsEMBL/DBSQL/BaseFeatureAdaptor.pm#L1490-L1491</a>):
                "When looking beyond the boundaries of the source
                Feature, the distance is measured to the nearest end of
                that Feature to the nearby Feature's nearest end."</p>
              <p>Any help will be much appreciated. I am happy to share
                code if you think it would be useful.</p>
              <p>Thanks,<br>
                Asier<br>
              </p>
              <br>
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              <pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">_______________________________________________
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