Hyphens in CIGAR column of sam file?

[GeneJockey]

I'm trying to convert a BLAT .psl file to a BAM file.

I've managed to convert the .psl to a SAM file using the psl2sam.pl script. Converting the SAM to BAM is giving me problems. I'm attempting the following:

samtools view -bS -t chicken.ref_List -o mtcontigs_test.bam mtcontigs_test.sam

and getting ...

[sam_header_read2] 34 sequences loaded.
Parse error at line 25: invalid CIGAR character
Aborted (core dumped)

So, I check line 25 and my CIGAR column has this:

47H78M38I-921M1025H

Where are these hyphens coming from? They're in quite a few of my entries. I can't find any reference as to what they might be so I can't figure out if I just need to delete them or replace them with something else.

Anyone seen something like this?

[GeneJockey]

I still haven't found a reason for the hyphens. No ideas?

[Rocketknight]

- isn't an allowed part of the sam file spec that I know of, which suggests this is probably a bug in psl2sam, or something weird in the input psl files you're feeding it that's causing the script to act unusually.

Can you paste the entire line of the SAM file that contains this CIGAR string? That should make it clear whether there's missing information in the CIGAR string, or if it's just a correct CIGAR string with an unwanted '-' in the middle.

[GeneJockey]

Here's a few lines from one of the SAM files with hyphens ...

contig00103 16 chr1 154791541 0 51H97M349252D24M1073H * 0 0 * * AS:i:0
contig00103 16 chr1 167090504 0 50H54M1141H * 0 0 * * AS:i:10
contig00103 16 chr1 18839958 0 46H94M2I36M1067H * 0 0 * * AS:i:0
contig00103 16 chr1 62707216 0 49H48M1148H * 0 0 * * AS:i:12
contig00103 16 chr1 130804050 0 10H118M18I48M1051H * 0 0 * * AS:i:0
contig00103 16 chrZ 28303141 0 47H78M38I-921M1025H * 0 0 * * AS:i:0
contig00103 16 chr9 18318424 0 52H61M2I-964M1073H * 0 0 * * AS:i:15

The last two lines have hyphens.