[Biopython] Reading large files, Biopython cookbook example

[Fields, Christopher J]

On Aug 6, 2013, at 1:49 PM, Andrew Dalke <dalke at dalkescientific.com>
 wrote:

> >...
> For another historical side-note, the PDB format started in
> the early 1970s, but contains a kernel which is even older!
> Quoting from
> 
>  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2143743/pdf/9232661.pdf :
> 
>  In order to establish the PDB, acceptance by the crystallographic
>  community was necessary, requiring a pilgrimage in 1970 to the Medical
>  Research Council (MRC) laboratory and Crystal Data Centre (CDC) in
>  Cambridge. One result of this exchange was a concession that coordinates
>  of protein structures would be stored in the same format as the small
>  molecule CDC database (with a redundant ATOM label at the beginning of
>  each card), retaining the now-arcane counting number at the end. But the
>  idea of a PDB was accepted by Professors Pemtz, Blow, Kennard, Diamond,
>  and colleagues in Cambridge.
> 
> The "now-arcane" counting number has long disappeared from the
> spec. It was there, I believe, so that if the punch cards were
> dropped then they could be resorted based on the last few columns.
> (I imagine you could also write a program to strip out the
> C-alpha cards, work with them, then merge the C-alphas back into
> the card deck correctly.)
> 
> 				Andrew
> 				dalke at dalkescientific.com

Now *that* is backwards-compatibility taken to an extreme.

chris