adding date stamp to standard

[husamia]

I did a search and I didn't find anybody discussing this so I am posting it here for first time.

Why datestamp has not been added to the FASTQ standard format? its causing me alot of headache because I have to always go back to pipeline to figure out when a run was done.

Thanks for any input, who should be answering this question?


i.e.

@EAS999_38:6:1:1377:1017/1

adding datestamp

@EAS999:12:54:40:11:10:11_38:6:1:1377:1017/1

[westerman]

What makes you think that the 'seqname' in a FastQ format is anywhere near a standard? As far as I know that FastQ standard is:

@seqname
sequence
+seqname [ the seqname is optional]
encoded_quality

'seqname' can be whatever someone want to put there. Thus I voted 'irrelevant' because what you are asking is, well, irrelevant and nonsensical. Feel free to change your 'seqname's to whatever you want because it does not affect the FastQ specification.

Now if you want to make a poll that we should demand that Illumina add a date to their 'seqname' ... well, that is a different matter. I doubt if Illumina would listen to us but we could try. They've certainly deviated from the Sanger-based FastQ format in the past -- e.g., quality encoding.

And I should add to Illumina's "crime" that of changing the 'seqname' in their recent version of CASAVA. The lack of paired end information in the 'seqname' broke almost every 3rd party software.