Package: python-xopen (0.3.2-1)

Python module to open compressed files transparently

This small Python module provides a xopen function that works like the built-in open function, but can also deal with compressed files. Supported compression formats are gzip, bzip2 and xz. They are automatically recognized by their file extensions .gz, .bz2 or .xz.

The focus is on being as efficient as possible on all supported Python versions. For example, simply using gzip.open is slow in older Pythons, and it is a lot faster to use a gzip subprocess.

This module has originally been developed as part of the cutadapt tool that is used in bioinformatics to manipulate sequencing data. It has been in successful use within that software for a few years.

This is the Python 2 version.