[EMBOSS] 'octanol' - output to stdout not possible?

[pmr at ebi.ac.uk]

Dear Harald,

>  with the general qualifiers "-filter" and "-stdout"
>  I tried to make 'octanol -graph png' write to stdout
>  and not to a file (for certain reasons).
>  Anyway, a file is written and I can't catch the output
>  directly from stdout.

For graphs output must go to a file because many programs will write more
than one PNG file.

>  Is there a solution for this problem or
>  is writing a file hardcoded?

Unfortunately the -goutfile stdout option will not work - the graphics
library writes the message "Created octanol.1.png" to stdout.

But for octanol there is a single image file produces, so you can use the
command line option:

 -goutfile x.png

and than cat x.png to stdout.

For programs that write more than one PNG file (prettyplot for example)
you will get x.png.1.png x.png.2.png and so on. I do not see an easy way
around this for PNG files.

Hope that helps,

Peter