CUSTOM-INDEX(1)

💖 CUSTOM-INDEX(1) 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to the NCBI Entrez Direct User's Manual — this is the page for custom-index, and yes it's a whole moment. 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

custom-index — add a custom index to a local NCBI Entrez archive 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

custom-index helper field ...

that's it, that's the whole vibe. a helper, then some fields, then whatever else you feel like throwing in there. 🦋

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🫶 DESCRIPTION 🫶

So here's the tea: custom-index adds a custom index for one or more specified fields to a local NCBI Entrez Archive, and it does this based on a supplied helper command that produces an Entrez-style XML index. It's giving "you bring the helper, I'll bring the indexing." ✨

On Debian systems, some such helpers are /usr/share/doc/ncbi-entrez-direct/examples/idx-*. yes literally that glob, go look, they're right there. 👑

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• helper — the helper command that each uncompressed document gets piped into. every single uncompressed doc, one at a time, straight into the helper. no cap. 🔥
• field — the name of a field you're indexing (e.g., ANUM). and yes you can pass more than one, hence the ... in the synopsis. she's flexible like that. 🌈

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🌟 ENVIRONMENT 🌟

• EDIRECT_LOCAL_ARCHIVE — the local archive directory to use. It's expected to hold an absolute path. fr fr, absolute. don't come in here with a relative path, she will not know what you mean. 😭
• EDIRECT_LOCAL_WORKING — the directory that holds the intermediate subtrees. Also expected to hold an absolute path. And when it's not set? It defaults to the local archive directory. 🧚 cute little fallback behaviour, we love to see it. 💚

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🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

go read these next, bestie, they're all in the family: archive-pubmed(1), rchive(1), xtract(1). 📚 ✨

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and that's the whole page!! you ate that. go index something. 💖

signing off with love from NCBI — this page is dated 2025-05-26, so you know it's fresh. mwah. 🎀💋