[BioC] problems reading fcs files / flowcore / read.fcs (David Corne)

[Mike]

Hi,All,

The old version of flowCore didn't take care of double delimiters, which 
was valid according to FCS3.0 standard. So we added the patch to support 
that. Unfortunately this patch assumed the empty value was not valid for 
keyword.(since it will be hard to tell the difference between one pair 
of single delimiters with empty value and one double-delimiter)

In order to still support the FCS generated by some instruments which 
contains empty values , I've added the argument 'emptyValue' to read.FCS 
routine.
Default is TRUE, which automatically excludes the possibility of double 
delimiters(they are treated as a pair of start and end single delimiter 
with an empty value)
Otherwise,empty value are not allowed and double delimiters are parsed 
as regular character which is part of value/keyword string.

The fix will appear in flowCore version 1.22.2.  Let me know if the fix 
solve the problem.
Thanks,

Mike

On 07/12/2012 08:08 AM, Finak, Greg wrote:
> Thanks, David and Cameron
> I've added Mike Jiang to the CC list, he's the point person on flowCore that will work on fixes.
>
> Best,
>
> Greg Finak, PhD
> Staff Scientist
> Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division
> Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
> Seattle, WA
> gfinak at fhcrc.org
> (206) 667-3116
>
> On 2012-07-12, at 7:55 AM, "David Corne" <dwcorne at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Greg,
>>
>> Many thanks for that.  I cc Cameron Mackenzie, who is at the
>> coalface trying to deal with this problem.  Yes we expected that
>> this was nonconformist files.
>>
>> Cameron, for specific examples of the most urgent
>> FCS files that you would want to work with PC and
>> the latest R,  I think the thing to do is send the error
>> report, and an associated file if possible (e.g. maybe 0ppm?)
>> direct to Greg, and see if his team can fit that in.
>>
>> VBD
>>
>> On 12 July 2012 15:45, Finak, Greg <gfinak at fhcrc.org> wrote:
>>> Hi, David
>>> In 2.15 there were some changes to the FCS file reading routine to make it compliant with the FCS file standards (it was not compliant prior to 2.15, and led to other errors). Unforunately, the result was that FCS reading was broken (inadvertently) for files from instruments where the manufacturers were not following the standard (apparently there are a lot of manufacturers that don't bother to implement the standard correctly). We're working on correcting these errors as we get bug reports.
>>>
>>> That said, it's next to impossible to help you out if you don't provide us with some more information.. i.e. provide a reproducible example,  sessioninfo(), the error message produced, and even an example of an FCS file where read.FCS fails.
>>>
>>> We want to fix these issues for users, and we understand that having software suddenly break when it was fine one version ago can be frustrating, but complaining into thin air is not really productive for anyone.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Greg Finak, PhD
>>> Staff Scientist
>>> Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division
>>> Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
>>> Seattle, WA
>>> gfinak at fhcrc.org
>>> (206) 667-3116
>>>
>>>> ------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> Message: 4
>>>> Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2012 11:58:27 +0100
>>>> From: David Corne <dwcorne at gmail.com>
>>>> To: bioconductor at r-project.org
>>>> Subject: [BioC] problems reading fcs files / flowcore / read.fcs
>>>> Message-ID:
>>>>    <CAFeka--GMXhzPib9SNWs1oFazAZrvtRSazwPtirTQsVuwnz79g at mail.gmail.com>
>>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>>>>
>>>> Dears All,
>>>>
>>>> I find issues with being able to read FCS files using read.fcs from
>>>> the flowcore package;
>>>>
>>>> So far it seems  FCS files from some instruments can't be read in R v
>>>> 2.150 on either linux or windows, but with R V 2.13.0  and 2.14.0 they
>>>> can be read in fine.
>>>>
>>>> It would be nice to be able to use the latest version of R - does
>>>> anyone have a fix? Could the flowcore authors maybe release a new
>>>> version where read.fcs works in R 2.15.0 ?
>>>>
>>>> VBD
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>>
>>
>> -- 
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> twitter: @dwcorne  / quote: "lightning, striking a cup of tea"
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------