readFastq {ShortRead} | R Documentation

## Read and write FASTQ-formatted files

### Description

`readFastq` reads all FASTQ-formated files in a directory `dirPath` whose file name matches pattern `pattern`, returning a compact internal representation of the sequences and quality scores in the files. Methods read all files into a single R object; a typical use is to restrict input to a single FASTQ file.

`writeFastq` writes an object to a single `file`, using `mode="w"` (the default) to create a new file or `mode="a"` append to an existing file. Attempting to write to an existing file with `mode="w"` results in an error.

### Usage

    readFastq(dirPath, pattern=character(0), ...)
    ## S4 method for signature 'character'
    readFastq(dirPath, pattern=character(0), ..., withIds=TRUE)

    writeFastq(object, file, mode="w", full=FALSE, compress=TRUE, ...)

### Arguments

`dirPath` | A character vector (or other object; see methods defined on this generic) giving the directory path (relative or absolute) or single file name of FASTQ files to be read.
`pattern` | The (`grep`-style) pattern describing file names to be read. The default (`character(0)`) results in (attempted) input of all files in the directory.
`object` | An object to be output in `fastq` format. For methods, use `showMethods(object, where=getNamespace("ShortRead"))`.
`file` | A length 1 character vector providing a path to a file to the object is to be written to.
`mode` | A length 1 character vector equal to either ‘w’ or ‘a’ to write to a new file or append to an existing file, respectively.
`full` | A logical(1) indicating whether the identifier line should be repeated `full=TRUE` or omitted `full=FALSE` on the third line of the fastq record.
`compress` | A logical(1) indicating whether the file should be gz-compressed. The default is `TRUE`.
`...` | Additional arguments. In particular, `qualityType` and `filter`: qualityType: Representation to be used for quality scores, must be one of `Auto` (choose Illumina base 64 encoding `SFastqQuality` if all characters are ASCII-encoded as greater than 58 `:` and some characters are greater than 74 `J`), `FastqQuality` (Phred-like base 33 encoding), `SFastqQuality` (Illumina base 64 encoding). filter: An object of class `srFilter`, used to filter objects of class `ShortReadQ` at input.
`withIds` | `logical(1)` indicating whether identifiers should be read from the fastq file.

### Details

The fastq format is not quite precisely defined. The basic definition used here parses the following four lines as a single record:

        @HWI-EAS88_1_1_1_1001_499
        GGACTTTGTAGGATACCCTCGCTTTCCTTCTCCTGT
        +HWI-EAS88_1_1_1_1001_499
        ]]]]]]]]]]]]Y]Y]]]]]]]]]]]]VCHVMPLAS

The first and third lines are identifiers preceded by a specific character (the identifiers are identical, in the case of Solexa). The second line is an upper-case sequence of nucleotides. The parser recognizes IUPAC-standard alphabet (hence ambiguous nucleotides), coercing `.` to `-` to represent missing values. The final line is an ASCII-encoded representation of quality scores, with one ASCII character per nucleotide.

The encoding implicit in Solexa-derived fastq files is that each character code corresponds to a score equal to the ASCII character value minus 64 (e.g., ASCII `@` is decimal 64, and corresponds to a Solexa quality score of 0). This is different from BioPerl, for instance, which recovers quality scores by subtracting 33 from the ASCII character value (so that, for instance, `!`, with decimal value 33, encodes value 0).

The BioPerl description of fastq asserts that the first character of line 4 is a `!`, but the current parser does not support this convention.

`writeFastq` creates files following the specification outlined above, using the IUPAC-standard alphabet (hence, sequences containing ‘.’ when read will be represented by ‘-’ when written).

### Value

`readFastq` returns a single R object (e.g., `ShortReadQ`) containing sequences and qualities contained in all files in `dirPath` matching `pattern`. There is no guarantee of order in which files are read.

`writeFastq` is invoked primarily for its side effect, creating or appending to file `file`. The function returns, invisibly, the length of `object`, and hence the number of records written.

### Author(s)

Martin Morgan

### See Also

The IUPAC alphabet in Biostrings.

http://www.bioperl.org/wiki/FASTQ_sequence_format for the BioPerl definition of fastq.

Solexa documentation 'Data analysis - documentation : Pipeline output and visualisation'.

### Examples

    showMethods(readFastq)
    showMethods(writeFastq)

    sp <- SolexaPath(system.file('extdata', package='ShortRead'))
    rfq <- readFastq(analysisPath(sp), pattern="s_1_sequence.txt")
    sread(rfq)
    id(rfq)
    quality(rfq)

    ## SolexaPath method 'knows' where FASTQ files are placed
    rfq1 <- readFastq(sp, pattern="s_1_sequence.txt")
    rfq1

    file <- tempfile()
    writeFastq(rfq, file)
    readLines(file, 8)

[Package ShortRead version 1.38.0 Index]