Introduction

  CIFPARSE is a function library developed to provide simple access tools for mmCIF [1,2] data files. As shown in Figure 1, CIFPARSE functions do not perform any semantic integrity checks using the DDL [3,4] or mmCIF [5] dictionaries. This library simply provides functions to read and write mmCIF data files that conform to the subset of STAR [6] syntax rules adopted by mmCIF.

There a variety of circumstances in which it is unnecessary or even to perform data intregity checks on mmCIF data files. For instance, in the situation where two computer program exchange mmCIF data or where a single program must repeatedly access a large database of mmCIF data that is know to be semantically valid. The CIFPARSE library was designed to address the need for simple and efficient tools for exchanging mmCIF data. The CIFPARSE library performs the following functions:

• reads and writes mmCIF format data files.
• provides read and write access for individual data items.
• provides functions for navigating the mmCIF category structure.
• provides a stable callable interface in the C programming language.

This document describes the functional interface to CIFPARSE.

 

Figure 1:  Functional diagram of the CIFPARSE utility library.