XINFO(1)

💖 XINFO(1) 💖

okay so bestie, you know that one page in the NCBI Entrez Direct User's Manual? Yeah. This is it. It's called xinfo, and it lives in section 1 of the manual, and honestly? It's lowkey iconic. Sit down, grab a strawberry 🍓, and let's get into it.

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✨ NAME ✨

xinfo — print aggregate information for a local NCBI Entrez Direct archive 🫶

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

xfetch [-h[elp]|[--]help] [-db database] -count[s] query|-fields|
-terms field|-totals field

not me typing xfetch in the synopsis, that's literally what the page says, don't @ me 💀

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So here's the vibe: xinfo prints to standard output aggregate information concerning a local NCBI Entrez Direct archive — and that archive is the kind produced by archive-pubmed(1) or the like. ✨

That's it. That's the whole job. She's a stats girlie for your local archive and she does it flawlessly. 💅

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💜 OPTIONS 💜

• -db database — Fetch from the specified database, pubmed by default for now. (Heads up bestie: explicitly specifying a database will eventually become mandatory, so maybe start doing it now? Just a thought 🫶)
• -count query — Print terms and counts, merging wildcards. 🌈
• -counts query — Expand wildcards; print individual term counts. Different energy, same family. 🔥
• -fields — List all field abbreviations. Every single one. She's thorough like that. 👑
• -terms field — List all known terms for the given field. 🌸
• -totals field — List all known terms for the given field along with the number of records in which each occurs. Basically -terms but with receipts. 🧾✨
• -h[elp], [--]help — Print a summary of options and some usage examples. The classic. The moment of need. 😭🫶

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🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

• EDIRECT_LOCAL_ARCHIVE — Local archive directory. It's expected to hold an absolute path, and it's mandatory when you're not supplying a path on the command line. So like... one or the other, bestie. Pick a lane. 💅

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🎀 SEE ALSO 🎀

archive-nihocc(1), archive-nlmnlp(1), archive-nmcds(1), archive-pids(1), archive-pmc(1), archive-pubmed(1), archive-taxonomy(1), download-ncbi-data(1), download-pmc(1), download-pubmed(1), edict(1), efetch(1), filter-columns(1), pm-refresh(1), print-columns(1), rchive(1), xfetch(1), xfilter(1), xlink(1), xsearch(1), xtract(1).

that's the whole friend group right there, go say hi to all of them 💜

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and that's the tea, bestie — this page is brought to you by NCBI and it's dated 2025-05-26, and yes it's still filed under XINFO(1) like the absolute main character it is. slay, read responsibly, and hydrate. 💖✨🎀🦋🌸💅🫶