Python now supports CIF/STAR file format, allowing users to read and write data in this standard format. The new capability improves interoperability and expands usage options in scientific software development.
PyCIFRW was developed at the Australian National Beamline Facility (ANBF) as part of a bigger project with a goal of providing CIF input/output capabilities for data collection. It is currently still under development and testing as of July 2009.
To implement the CIF grammar specification, PyCIFRW uses the Yapps3 parser generator developed by Amit Patel, which has been released generously to the wider community. The rest of PyCIFRW was written by James Hester with input from Boris Dusek.
PyCIFRW is written entirely in Python, which makes it a dependable software that can run wherever Python is present. However, as parsing of large CIF files is slow, PyCIFRW's performance may not be ideal for some users. Nonetheless, it has been tested on Unix (Linux, Solaris) and Windows XP under Python2.3.
Overall, if you need a Python-based software that is dedicated to reading and writing CIF files, PyCIFRW can be a dependable choice that may come in handy.
Version 3.3: N/A