3.1.2 Molecular File Formats

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.