Syntax test suite for CIF

Small suite of test files conforming (or not) to STAR/CIF syntax rules and designed as an aid to parser development

Here is a small suite of test files conforming (or not) to STAR/CIF syntax rules and designed as an aid to parser development.

The test files are listed below. Since they may be empty or contain a range of unusual characters designed to test CIF parsers, they may not show their contents clearly in a web browser and should be saved to a local working directory. Files ciftest0 through 5 and 11 are syntactically valid; ciftest6 through 10 contain various common errors. Each file has a *.result.canon file that contains the output from a vcif validation run on that file. There is also a simple Unix shell script to run vcif on each file and compare the output with the canonical file as distributed.

Documentation and commentary are in the test files and in the vcif output.

For convenience, the file test.tar contains the test and output files and driver script in a Unix tar archive.

This collection was developed in May 2000 and tests the CIF 1.0 specification. CIFTEST2 provides tests for CIF 1.1.

ciftest0  Purpose: null file
ciftest1  Purpose: a file containing only a CIF comment line
ciftest2  Purpose: a CIF containing only a null data block
ciftest3  Purpose: a minimal CIF with content
ciftest4  Purpose: simple valid file conforming to CIF syntax
ciftest5  Purpose: valid STAR/CIF file with potential traps for lazy parsers
ciftest6  Purpose: error CIF: lacks initial data statement; other data_ faults
ciftest7  Purpose: incorrectly terminated character strings - a common problem
ciftest8  Purpose: wrong line and dataname lengths - valid STAR, broken CIF
ciftest9  Purpose: things wrong with loops
ciftest10 Purpose: non-printing characters
ciftest11 Purpose: line endings - should parse OK

Brian McMahon
10 May 2000