DEXTA(1)

📦 version 1.0, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 NAME 💖

dexta — compress a set of .fasta files. yeah. that's the whole thing. it squishes fasta files. iconic behavior honestly.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

dexta [-vk] <path:fasta> ...

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so bestie, listen. Dexta takes a whole little squad of .fasta files — the kind that come out of either Pacbio's software or dextract — and it compresses them, then replaces each one with a brand new file that has a .dexta extension. so if you hand it G.fasta, you get back a compressed image called G.dexta, and G.fasta will no longer exist. gone. poof. 💀 not a drill.

if you're not emotionally ready for your originals to vanish, read the -k bullet below. seriously. 🫶
  • -k — with this set, the .fasta source is not removed. your originals stay right where they are. keeping the receipts, as you should.
  • -v — turns on the yapping: the program reports its progress on each file. without it, dexta runs completely silently — which is honestly the move for batch jobs to an HPC cluster. no notes. no output. just vibes. 🤫

the compression factor is always slightly better than 4.0. always. slightly. better. periodt. 💅

and now for the reverse uno card: undexta reverses the compression of dexta, replacing the uncompressed image of G.dexta with G.fasta. by default, the sequences output by undexta come out in lower case and 80 chars per line. if you want different, you have options:

  • -U — specifies that upper case should be used instead.
  • -w — sets the characters per line, aka the line width, to any positive value you want. go off.

and there's one more little trick up her sleeve:

  • -i — with this set, the program runs as a UNIX pipe ✨ it takes .fasta (.dexta) input from the standard input and writes .dexta (.fasta) to the standard output. and heads up: in this case, the -k option has no effect. it's just out here doing nothing. poor thing. 🙈

🌸 SEE ALSO 🌸

the full documentation for dexta is maintained as a Texinfo manual. if the info and dexta programs are properly installed at your site, this command

info dexta

should give you access to the complete manual. iykyk. 📖

and that's the whole page, bestie 💜 this was dexta from June 2020 — go compress something and text me when you're done. slay. 🎀🦋✨

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