Special output types - RomainFeron/workshop-snakemake-sibdays2020 GitHub Wiki
Snakemake has several built-in utilities to assign properties to outputs. These properties are listed in the table below:
| Property | Syntax | Function |
|---|---|---|
| Temporary | temp('path/to/file.txt') |
The file is deleted as soon as it is not required by any future jobs |
| Protected | protected('path/to/file.txt') |
The file cannot be overwritten after the job ends (useful to prevent erasing a file by mistake) |
| Ancient | ancient('path/to/file.txt') |
The file will not be re-created when running the pipeline (useful for files that require heavy computation and are not affected by previous inputs) |
| Directory | directory('path/to/directory') |
The output is a directory instead of a file (use 'touch' instead if possible) |
| Touch | touch('path/to/file.txt') |
Creates an empty file 'file.txt' regardless of the shell command (useful to create "flag files" when a command's output is complex) |