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Diffstat (limited to 'python/xopen/README')
| -rw-r--r-- | python/xopen/README | 12 |
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diff --git a/python/xopen/README b/python/xopen/README new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..97bf8546ee --- /dev/null +++ b/python/xopen/README @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@ +This Python module provides a xopen function that works like the built- +in open function, but can also deal with compressed files. Supported +compression formats are gzip, bzip2 and xz. They are automatically +recognized by their file extensions .gz, .bz2 or .xz. + +The focus is on being as efficient as possible on all supported Python +versions. For example, simply using gzip.open is slow in older Pythons, +and it is a lot faster to use a gzip subprocess. + +This module has originally been developed as part of the cutadapt tool +that is used in bioinformatics to manipulate sequencing data. It has +been in successful use within that software for a few years. |