Using a .fasta file to compute relative content of sequences - perl

Question

So me being the 'noob' that I am, being introduced to programming via Perl just recently, I'm still getting used to all of this. I have a .fasta file which I have to use, although I'm unsure if I'm able to open it, or if I have to work with it 'blindly', so to speak.
Anyway, the file that I have contains DNA sequences for three genes, written in this .fasta format.
Apparently it's something like this:
>label
sequence
>label
sequence
>label
sequence
My goal is to write a script to open and read the file, which I have gotten the hang of now, but I have to read each sequence, compute relative amounts of 'G' and 'C' within each sequence, and then I'm to write it to a TAB-delimited file the names of the genes, and their respective 'G' and 'C' content.
Would anyone be able to provide some guidance? I'm unsure what a TAB-delimited file is, and I'm still trying to figure out how to open a .fasta file to actually see the content. So far I've worked with .txt files which I can easily open, but not .fasta.
I apologise for sounding completely bewildered. I'd appreciate your patience. I'm not like you pros out there!!

Answer 1

I get that it's confusing, but you really should try to limit your question to one concrete problem, see https://stackoverflow.com/faq#questions
I have no idea what a ".fasta" file or 'G' and 'C' is.. but it probably doesn't matter.
Generally:
Open input file
Read and parse data. If it's in some strange format that you can't parse, go hunting on http://metacpan.org for a module to read it. If you're lucky someone has already done the hard part for you.
Compute whatever you're trying to compute
Print to screen (standard out) or another file.
A "TAB-delimite" file is a file with columns (think Excel) where each column is separated by the tab ("\t") character. As quick google or stackoverflow search would tell you..

Answer 2

Here is an approach using 'awk' utility which can be used from the command line. The following program is executed by specifying its path and using awk -f <path> <sequence file>
#NR>1 means only look at lines above 1 because you said the sequence starts on line 2
NR>1{
#this for-loop goes through all bases in the line and then performs operations below:
for (i=1;i<=length;i++)
#for each position encountered, the variable "total" is increased by 1 for total bases
total++
}
{
for (i=1;i<=length;i++)
#if the "substring" i.e. position in a line == c or g upper or lower (some bases are
#lowercase in some fasta files), it will carry out the following instructions:
if(substr($0,i,1)=="c" || substr($0,i,1)=="C")
#this increments the c count by one for every c or C encountered, the next if statement does
#the same thing for g and G:
c++; else
if(substr($0,i,1)=="g" || substr($0,i,1)=="G")
g++
}
END{
#this "END-block" prints the gene name and C, G content in percentage, separated by tabs
print "Gene name\tG content:\t"(100*g/total)"%\tC content:\t"(100*c/total)"%"
}