feature request: tabix with space delimiter

[winni2k]

I would like to index a file in WTCCC haps format so that I can pull out regions of interest. It strikes me that bgzip and tabix would work on this if the file was tab instead of space delimited. Before I go off and replace all the spaces with tabs, I was wondering how hard it would be to implement a run time or even compile time option to bgzip and tabix that allows for other delimiters other than tab.

[lh3]

As is implied by the name of "tabix", the manual page and the paper, tabix only works with TAB-delimited formats. You can convert other delimiter easily with tr " " "\t" < input.txt.

That said, it is fine to add a new command line switch to optionally identify fields by space, but this should not be the default behavior. Multiple TAB-delimited formats permit spaces in each field.

[pd3]

We could in principle allow arbitrary delimiters. It would make sense to store this with the other information in the header of .tbi file, but that would break backward compatibility. I am not convinced it is worth it.