If i were in in your shoes, i would have asked like this:

Dear monks,

I've got an assignment (and got no plan).

The task is:

• Write a Perl program that asks a user for a gene ID or accession number and returns the sequence that corresponds to that gene.
• Use a hash to accomplish this.
• Get the genes and their sequences from NCBI and create the hash so that the key = gene ID and value = sequence.
• Handle the case where the gene ID is not found in the hash.

Here is what i tried already: # some code.

I need help on how to start because (...).

Thank you very much for any hint.

Regards, jgood4

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My best regards, Karl