identifying the command for creating VCF file

Question

[Sara]

I have some VCF files. is it possible to find the command with which the VCF files are created? I know for alignment we can use samtools to find the alignment command. is there such tool for the VCF file?

[Carambakaracho]

bcftools? Though this is probably not what you need.

Similar to sam/bam format, sometimes the meta information contains the software used for variant calling (see the source tag, for example).

However, the tag is optional, not clearly specified and in most interpretations you get the software and version used at best. You might be able to deduce some used options from the filter, info and format columns.

[JC]

The method or command could be in the header, but only if that was added.