Skip to content

CLI Reference

The escpod command-line tool provides utilities for working with POD5 files.

Usage

escpod <COMMAND> [OPTIONS]

Commands

These commands are in the default build — no extra Cargo features required.

Command Description
summary Comprehensive file summary with QC metrics
view Display reads as a table
inspect Inspect file metadata and contents
merge Combine multiple POD5 files
filter Extract reads by ID list
bam-filter Filter reads based on paired BAM file
subset Split reads into multiple files based on CSV mapping

Additional commands (repack, resquiggle, demux, index) live behind Cargo feature gates — see the Experimental section.

Global Options

-h, --help     Print help information
-V, --version  Print version information

Examples

Basic Workflow

# 1. Inspect what's in your files
escpod inspect summary run1.pod5
escpod inspect summary run2.pod5

# 2. View the reads
escpod view run1.pod5

# 3. Merge files from a run
escpod merge -o combined.pod5 run1.pod5 run2.pod5

# 4. Extract interesting reads
escpod filter -i selected_reads.txt -o subset.pod5 combined.pod5

Working with Multiple Files

Process all POD5 files in a directory:

# List all files
ls *.pod5

# Merge all files
escpod merge -o all_data.pod5 *.pod5

Extracting Read IDs

To get a list of read IDs from a file:

escpod inspect reads experiment.pod5 > read_ids.txt

Then filter another file:

escpod filter -i read_ids.txt -o filtered.pod5 other_experiment.pod5