Cannot run xtract from entrez direct
1
0
Entering edit mode
6.9 years ago
rabio ▴ 10

I have been unable to use xtract function from EDirect, as I get the following message simply by typing "xtract" into terminal:

Unable to locate xtract executable. Please execute the following: ftp-cp ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov /entrez/entrezdirect xtract.Darwin.gz gunzip -f xtract.Darwin.gz chmod +x xtract.Darwin

I ran this, but it does not solve the problem. I have tried reinstalling EDirect and changing the xtract.Darwin file name to just xtract as well, but to no success. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

xtract entrez edirect • 4.6k views
ADD COMMENT
0
Entering edit mode
6.9 years ago
GenoMax 147k

Did you follow the instructions given on this page. Last step of running setup.sh from the edirect directory is important to get this working right.

ADD COMMENT
0
Entering edit mode

Yes! And in the directory ~/edirect the following files exist: xtract, xtract.Darwin, and xtract.go. And giving all permissions (chmod 777) does not help either.

ADD REPLY
0
Entering edit mode

Is that directory in your $PATH?

export PATH=$PATH: ~/edirect

ADD REPLY
0
Entering edit mode

echo $PATH returns the following:

/Users/username/src/edirect:/Users/username/Documents/SeniorPt1/Lab/miniconda3/bin:/Users/username/miniconda3/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/X11/bin:/Users/username/edirect:/Users/username/edirect:/Users/username/edirect:/Users/username/edirect::/edirect:
ADD REPLY
0
Entering edit mode

Are you using an account called username? Or did you just replace the real name with a dummy word? I assume the path is not permanently set like that. Can you open a new terminal window and do export PATH=$PATH: ~/edirect to see if that fixes the strange multiple entry path above?

ADD REPLY
0
Entering edit mode

Yes, just replacing it with a dummy word.

Thank you so much, that fixed the problem! It works now!

ADD REPLY
0
Entering edit mode

Hi, I'm having the exact same issue but having trouble understanding your proposed solution.

echo $PATH returns:

/Users/luke/src/edirect:/Users/luke/perl5/perlbrew/bin:/Users/luke/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.28.0/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/Users/luke/edirect:/Users/luke

Opening a new terminal and executing:

export PATH=$PATH: ~/edirect

returns:

-bash: export: `/Users/luke/edirect': not a valid identifier

Any help is appreciated!

ADD REPLY
0
Entering edit mode

That probably means the last step I mentioned in the original answer has not been executed.

What do you see when you do ls -lh ~/edirect?

ADD REPLY
0
Entering edit mode
total 18192
-rw-r--r--  1 luke  staff   149K Aug 24 15:21 Mozilla-CA.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--  1 luke  staff   2.5K Oct 22  2016 README
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   526B Oct 24  2016 amino-acid-composition
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   1.5K Jul 27 12:50 archive-pubmed
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   2.3K Aug 12  2017 asp-cp
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   647B Jan 16  2018 asp-ls
drwxr-xr-x  5 luke  staff   160B Sep  1 19:29 aux
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff    88B Oct 24  2016 between-two-genes
-rw-r--r--  1 luke  staff    85K Aug 20 11:25 common.go
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   742B Feb 18  2018 download-pubmed
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   533B Oct 24  2017 download-sequence
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   265B Jan  8  2015 eaddress
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   263B Aug  5 14:00 eblast
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   266B Oct 29  2016 ecitmatch
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   265B Mar 20  2013 econtact
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   117K Aug 16 12:50 edirect.pl
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   2.6K Jan 16  2018 edirutil
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   263B Mar 20  2013 efetch
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   264B Mar 20  2013 efilter
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   262B Mar 20  2013 einfo
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   262B Mar 20  2013 elink
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   264B Mar 20  2013 enotify
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   3.4K May 17  2017 entrez-phrase-search
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   262B Mar 20  2013 epost
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   263B Mar 20  2013 eproxy
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   264B Mar 20  2013 esearch
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   263B Sep  8  2014 espell
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   278B Feb 10  2014 esummary
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   1.2K Jun  5 21:25 fetch-pubmed
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   903B Nov 21  2016 filter-stop-words
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   955B Jan 16  2018 ftp-cp
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   637B Jan 16  2018 ftp-ls
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff    13K Jan 16  2018 gbf2xml
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   1.1K Aug 12  2017 has-asp
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   2.0K Jul 27 12:50 index-pubmed
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   112B May 24 11:50 intersect-uid-lists
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff    45B Aug 31  2014 join-into-groups-of
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   2.5K Aug 21 16:50 local-phrase-search
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff    10K Jan 16  2018 nquire
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   331B Jun 21 19:50 pm-clean
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   493B Jul 28 21:25 pm-current
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   187B Mar 18 21:01 pm-erase
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   371B Jul 13 20:00 pm-index
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   393B Aug 20 11:25 pm-invert
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   525B Feb 17  2018 pm-log
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   446B Aug 20 11:25 pm-merge
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   1.8K Jul 19 17:50 pm-prepare
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   479B Aug 20 11:25 pm-promote
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   959B Jun 25 12:00 pm-refresh
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   643B Apr  3 03:00 pm-repack
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   1.6K Aug  7 15:00 pm-stash
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   188B Mar 18 21:01 pm-uids
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff    89B Apr 24 13:25 pm-verify
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   107B Aug  5 15:00 protein-neighbors
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   690B Apr  2 14:50 rchive
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   4.5M Sep  1 23:35 rchive.Darwin
-rw-r--r--  1 luke  staff   129K Aug 24 14:00 rchive.go
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   173B Jan 14  2015 reorder-columns
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   2.6K Jan 16  2018 run-ncbi-converter
-rw-r--r--  1 luke  staff    51K Sep  1 23:35 setup-deps.log
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   2.4K Jan 16  2018 setup-deps.pl
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 luke  staff   2.6K Apr  2 14:50 setup.sh
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   200B Oct 27  2016 sort-uniq-count
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   249B Apr 16 13:00 sort-uniq-count-rank
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   1.0K Jun  5 21:25 stream-pubmed
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff    80B Jul 14  2015 word-at-a-time
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   690B Apr  2 14:50 xtract
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   3.3M Sep  1 23:35 xtract.Darwin
-rw-r--r--  1 luke  staff   203K Aug 21 12:50 xtract.go
-rwxr-xr-x  1 luke  staff   1.3K Apr 15 15:25 xy-plot
ADD REPLY
1
Entering edit mode

Make sure there is no space between $PATH: and directory name.

export PATH=$PATH:~/edirect
ADD REPLY
0
Entering edit mode

Progress.

It did not return:

-bash: export: `/Users/luke/edirect': not a valid identifier.

However, I still get the original error message from the OP and myself:

Unable to locate xtract executable. Please execute the following:

  ftp-cp ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov /entrez/entrezdirect xtract.Darwin.gz
  gunzip -f xtract.Darwin.gz
  chmod +x xtract.Darwin

And executing this does not seem to fix the problem.

echo $PATH returns:

/Users/luke/src/edirect:/Users/luke/perl5/perlbrew/bin:/Users/luke/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.28.0/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/Users/luke/edirect:/Users/luke:/Users/luke/edirect

@genomax, I can't thank you enough for helping me work through this!

ADD REPLY
0
Entering edit mode

Just to confirm. You are using macOS? These executables are for macOS.

What do you get from which xtract and xtract -h or --help?

ADD REPLY
0
Entering edit mode

Correct. macOS High Sierra 10.13.6

which xtract returns:

/Users/luke/src/edirect/xtract

xtract -h returns:

Unable to locate xtract executable. Please execute the following:

  ftp-cp ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov /entrez/entrezdirect xtract.Darwin.gz
  gunzip -f xtract.Darwin.gz
  chmod +x xtract.Darwin
ADD REPLY
1
Entering edit mode

Did you ever manage to get xtract working?

I am running into the exact same problem.

ADD REPLY
0
Entering edit mode

I just followed the directions on same OS version and I am able to use xtract fine.

I get a warning about perl version of xtract being obsolete (if I run xtract -h) but it works.

ADD REPLY

Login before adding your answer.

Traffic: 1836 users visited in the last hour
Help About
FAQ
Access RSS
API
Stats

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy.

Powered by the version 2.3.6