Bioinformatics Format Specimens

Bioinformatics is rife with formats and parsers for those formats. These parsers don't always agree on the definitions of these formats, since many lack any sort of formal standard.

This repository aims to consolidate a collection of format specimens to create a unified set of data with which to test software against. Testing against the same cases is a first step towards agreeing on the details and edge cases of a format.

Organization

This repository consists of a directory for every major format. Directories contain format specimens along with a file index.yml. This is a YAML document containing an entry for every specimen in the directory. Each entry has the following fields:

• filename Specimen filename.
• valid True or false, annotating whether the example is considered to conform to the format.
• origin The contributor or source from which a specimen was taken.
• tags Zero or more words used to group specimens by shared features.
• comments (Optional) Any additional information that might be of interest.