The index files of the blast database format are not useful by themselves as they do not hold the entrynames or accession numbers, but they are used as pointers to the reference and sequence information in the database. Here is a sample session with dbiblast, using a blast 2 protein database. Any string is accepted . Any string is accepted . Sort options, typically '-T .
Any string is accepted -T .
No No Input file format Output file format dbiflat creates four index files. All are binary but with a simple format. This header is followed by one record for each database file, giving the full file name for the data file, and optionally a second sequence file. It has the same 300 byte header, mainly used to store the record size which will depend on the size of the longest entryname in the database. Each entry is stored in sorted alphanumeric order so that a binary search can be used to efficiently find any record.