Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!nih-csl!lhc!ncifcrf!fcs260c2!toms
From: toms@fcs260c2.ncifcrf.gov (Tom Schneider)
Newsgroups: bionet.molbio.genome-program
Subject: Re: GenBank Parser
Keywords: genome,parser
Message-ID: <1885@fcs280s.ncifcrf.gov>
Date: 24 Sep 90 17:04:02 GMT
References: <922@dimebox.cs.utexas.edu>
Sender: news@ncifcrf.gov
Organization: NCI Supercomputer Facility, Frederick, MD
Lines: 21

In article <922@dimebox.cs.utexas.edu> read@cs.utexas.edu (Rob) writes:
>*  Does anyone have a lexer/parser for the GenBank Feature Table?
>*  Would anone want one if wrote one?

This is an excellent idea.  But it depends on a "Definition of Genbank", a
document that (to my knowledge) not ever made public.  Has this been released?
Is it complete?  Does it include a complete BNF of the entire data structure
(not just the features table)?  Does it define allowed values of all parameters
in the structure?  If these things are not in place and documented, your parser
is doomed eventually...  (I spent many years attempting as a GenBank Advisor to
get them to define the database, and I don't think they have.)

>Robert L. Read				University of Texas
>read@cs.utexas.edu			Center for High Performance
>(512)-477-1240				Computation

  Tom Schneider
  National Cancer Institute
  Laboratory of Mathematical Biology
  Frederick, Maryland  21702-1201
  toms@ncifcrf.gov