MUMmer plot error. Line 884. What to do?

Question

My third year comp sci friend got me this far, I hope you guys can help me with the last inch! For the record, I have practically no coding experience. I am using the 3.9.4 alpha version of MUMmer.

Here is the manual I have been following: http://mummer.sourceforge.net/examples/

I am at part 2.2.2 Running the Mummer plot, and I type in the final line to generate the plot.

I type:

mummerplot -x "[0,8666124]" -y "[0,9025688]" -postscript -p mummer mummer.mums

And the error is:

Can't use 'defined(%hash)' (Maybe you should omit the defined ()?) at /usr/bin/mummerplot line 884

Line at 884:

if ( defined (%$rref) ) {                                                                                                            #-- skip reference sequence or set atts from hash
        if ( !exists ($rref->{$idR}) ) { next; }
        else { ($refoff, $reflen, $refdir) = @{$rref->{$idR}}; }

Its perl

Answer 1

I had the same error and I solved by removing defined and writing only if (%$rref) in the mummerplot code. You have to do this for all the lines that you have it. There should be six lines to correct in this way .

You can find an explanation of why here, that tells that the function defined:

Returns a Boolean value telling whether EXPR has a value other than the undefined value undef. If EXPR is not present, $_ is checked.

And then:

Use of defined on aggregates (hashes and arrays) is no longer supported. It used to report whether memory for that aggregate had ever been allocated. You should instead use a simple test for size: if (%a_hash) { print "has hash members\n" }