# Hamming

Calculate the Hamming difference between two DNA strands.

A mutation is simply a mistake that occurs during the creation or
copying of a nucleic acid, in particular DNA. Because nucleic acids are
vital to cellular functions, mutations tend to cause a ripple effect
throughout the cell. Although mutations are technically mistakes, a very
rare mutation may equip the cell with a beneficial attribute. In fact,
the macro effects of evolution are attributable by the accumulated
result of beneficial microscopic mutations over many generations.

The simplest and most common type of nucleic acid mutation is a point
mutation, which replaces one base with another at a single nucleotide.

By counting the number of differences between two homologous DNA strands
taken from different genomes with a common ancestor, we get a measure of
the minimum number of point mutations that could have occurred on the
evolutionary path between the two strands.

This is called the 'Hamming distance'.

It is found by comparing two DNA strands and counting how many of the
nucleotides are different from their equivalent in the other string.

    GAGCCTACTAACGGGAT
    CATCGTAATGACGGCCT
    ^ ^ ^  ^ ^    ^^

The Hamming distance between these two DNA strands is 7.

# Implementation notes

The Hamming distance is only defined for sequences of equal length, so
an attempt to calculate it between sequences of different lengths should
not work. The general handling of this situation (e.g., raising an
exception vs returning a special value) may differ between languages.

You may be wondering about the `cases_test.go` file. We explain it in the
[leap exercise][leap-exercise-readme].

[leap-exercise-readme]: https://github.com/exercism/go/blob/master/exercises/leap/README.md 


## Running the tests

To run the tests run the command `go test` from within the exercise directory.

If the test suite contains benchmarks, you can run these with the `--bench` and `--benchmem`
flags:

    go test -v --bench . --benchmem

Keep in mind that each reviewer will run benchmarks on a different machine, with
different specs, so the results from these benchmark tests may vary.

## Further information

For more detailed information about the Go track, including how to get help if
you're having trouble, please visit the exercism.io [Go language page](http://exercism.io/languages/go/about).

## Source

The Calculating Point Mutations problem at Rosalind [http://rosalind.info/problems/hamm/](http://rosalind.info/problems/hamm/)

## Submitting Incomplete Solutions
It's possible to submit an incomplete solution so you can see how others have completed the exercise.