Filter can read and write a variety of molecular file formats. The file format is automatically interpreted from the filename suffix.
Old OEBinary format can be read but not written by Filter. Gzipped OEBinary version 2 is the recommended output format.
Filter is also capable of piping formatted input and output.
The simple "-" can be used in place of a file name to indicate
std::cin or std::cout with the default SMILES format.
prompt> filter -in - -out -
This execution will run Filter with std::cin as the
input with SMILES format. It will also open std::cout with
SMILES format as output. However, the use of "-" does not allow control of
the file format.
To control the format of std::cin and std::cout one may use
the file extensions without a preceeding filename.
prompt> filter -in .ism -out .oeb.gz
This executes Filter with the input from std::cin formated in
isomeric SMILES and the output sent to std::cout in gzipped OEBinary
version 2 format.