parse NCBI blast tab limited output

Question

[Eva_Maria]

Hi

Is there any script or tool which is able to parse NCBI blast tab limited output (produced with -m 8 option).

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

awk is able to parse "blast -m 8". Define "parse" & the context of your needs if awk is not enough.

[Eva_Maria]

I want to extract best alignment base on e value

[Michael]

I think they come out sorted by score, so it will be the first result most likely.

[Jenez]

BLAST+ returns its results ordered by e-value, but does not always sort according to score in the event that two results have equal e-values. Not sure if legacy BLAST works in the same way but it could be risky to make that assumption.

[Prakki Rama]

newer versions of excel is not a bad option either if your file is considerable agreeable in size.