-.TH samtools 1 "6 July 2009" "samtools-0.1.5" "Bioinformatics tools"
+.TH samtools 1 "2 September 2009" "samtools-0.1.6" "Bioinformatics tools"
.SH NAME
.PP
samtools - Utilities for the Sequence Alignment/Map (SAM) format
pipes. Samtools always output warning and error messages to the standard
error output (stderr).
-Samtools is also able to open a BAM (not SAM) file on a remote FTP
-server if the BAM file name starts with `ftp://'. Samtools checks the
-current working directory for the index file and will download the index
-upon absence. Samtools achieves random FTP file access with the `REST'
-ftp command. It does not retrieve the entire alignment file unless it is
-asked to do so.
+Samtools is also able to open a BAM (not SAM) file on a remote FTP or
+HTTP server if the BAM file name starts with `ftp://' or `http://'.
+Samtools checks the current working directory for the index file and
+will download the index upon absence. Samtools does not retrieve the
+entire alignment file unless it is asked to do so.
.SH COMMANDS AND OPTIONS
.TP
.B merge
-samtools merge [-n] <out.bam> <in1.bam> <in2.bam> [...]
-
-Merge multiple sorted alignments. The header of
-.I <in1.bam>
+samtools merge [-h inh.sam] [-n] <out.bam> <in1.bam> <in2.bam> [...]
+
+Merge multiple sorted alignments.
+The header reference lists of all the input BAM files, and the @SQ headers of
+.IR inh.sam ,
+if any, must all refer to the same set of reference sequences.
+The header reference list and (unless overridden by
+.BR -h )
+`@' headers of
+.I in1.bam
will be copied to
-.I <out.bam>
+.IR out.bam ,
and the headers of other files will be ignored.
.B OPTIONS:
.RS
.TP 8
+.B -h FILE
+Use the lines of
+.I FILE
+as `@' headers to be copied to
+.IR out.bam ,
+replacing any header lines that would otherwise be copied from
+.IR in1.bam .
+.RI ( FILE
+is actually in SAM format, though any alignment records it may contain
+are ignored.)
+.TP
.B -n
The input alignments are sorted by read names rather than by chromosomal
coordinates
If option
.B -c
-is applied, the consensus base, consensus quality, SNP quality and RMS
-mapping quality of the reads covering the site will be inserted between
-the `reference base' and the `read bases' columns. An indel occupies an
-additional line. Each indel line consists of chromosome name,
-coordinate, a star, the genotype, consensus quality, SNP quality, RMS
-mapping quality, # covering reads, the first alllele, the second allele,
-# reads supporting the first allele, # reads supporting the second
-allele and # reads containing indels different from the top two alleles.
+is applied, the consensus base, Phred-scaled consensus quality, SNP
+quality (i.e. the Phred-scaled probability of the consensus being
+identical to the reference) and root mean square (RMS) mapping quality
+of the reads covering the site will be inserted between the `reference
+base' and the `read bases' columns. An indel occupies an additional
+line. Each indel line consists of chromosome name, coordinate, a star,
+the genotype, consensus quality, SNP quality, RMS mapping quality, #
+covering reads, the first alllele, the second allele, # reads supporting
+the first allele, # reads supporting the second allele and # reads
+containing indels different from the top two alleles.
.B OPTIONS:
.RS
Unaligned words used in bam_import.c, bam_endian.h, bam.c and bam_aux.c.
.IP o 2
CIGAR operation P is not properly handled at the moment.
+.IP o 2
+In merging, the input files are required to have the same number of
+reference sequences. The requirement can be relaxed. In addition,
+merging does not reconstruct the header dictionaries
+automatically. Endusers have to provide the correct header. Picard is
+better at merging.
+.IP o 2
+Samtools' rmdup does not work for single-end data and does not remove
+duplicates across chromosomes. Picard is better.
.SH AUTHOR
.PP
.SH SEE ALSO
.PP
-Samtools website: http://samtools.sourceforge.net
+Samtools website: <http://samtools.sourceforge.net>