Why is there not a intronsBy() function in GenomicFeatures? only intronsByTranscript()?

Question

[Pratik]

Hello Biostars Community,

I feel like I am missing something fundamental here.

For GenomicFeatures Why isn't there a function like intronsBy() to extract introns by gene rather than transcript (ie intronsByTranscript()), the same way there is a function like exonsBy to extract exons by gene.

In other words, in the GenomicFeatures documentation there is:

## Get the exons grouped by gene:
exonsBy(txdb, "gene")

However, for introns there is:

## Get the introns grouped by transcript:
intronsByTranscript(txdb)

while there is not a function like this:

## Get the introns grouped by gene:
intronsBy(txdb, "gene")

Could someone share their insights, please, to sort of solidify my understanding? There has to be some method to this madness!

Thank you in advance.

-Pratik