[chemfp] tab-only instead of tab-or-space

[Rajarshi Guha]

Wouldn't a tab only format be easier - simply because it's just one
thing to check for?

I certainly support single tab as the field separator

On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 8:50 AM, Andrew Dalke <dalke at dalkescientific.com> wrote:

> I've talked to a number of people about chemfp.

>

> Two of them pointed out that they use identifiers which

> contain a space. One is a company with corporate IDs that

> contain a space (yech!), and another wants to use IUPAC

> names as identifiers.

>

> It's easy enough to say that the fields in the FPS format

> are separated by one and only one tab, instead of the

> current, which is one tab or one space.

>

> I am considering making this a tab-only format.

>

> What I'm concerned about is how that makes it slightly

> more complicated for people to write the format.

>

> I also have my experience that working with tab files

> is just a bit more complicated. It's hard to see tabs,

> and editors do strange things with them.

>

> I figure if you're on this list then you can handle

> writing a \t. Do you have any feel of what sorts of

> issues might come up, and if others - the more

> non-programmer computational chemists that this format

> is meant for - might have problems with a tab-only format?

>

>

>                                Andrew

>                                dalke at dalkescientific.com

>

>

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-- 
Rajarshi Guha
NIH Chemical Genomics Center