What does .bim .bed .fam stands for?

Question

[Nagy]

I have a hard time differentiating these files, maybe understanding the acronyms could help.

If I'm right .ped is from pedigree and .bed is a strange way to say 'binary-pedigree'. The others are obscure.

Answer 1

[Mark]

It sounds like these files were generated from plink? There is a huge list of file formats here: https://www.cog-genomics.org/plink/1.9/formats that I found via googling:

.bed (PLINK binary biallelic genotype table)
.ped (PLINK/MERLIN/Haploview text pedigree + genotype table)
.fam (PLINK sample information file)

More info in the link

[Nagy]

Yes, thank you, but my question is about the abbreviations. Like .txt is for text, .csv is for comma-separated values, .fam is for ??? (I mean: it is a really bad abbreviation for "PLINK sample information file")

[Sam]

If I have to guess, .fam stands for family, whereas .bim might be something along the line of binary map file (map file is the SNP coordinate mapping)

[Mark]

Ah right I see your question now. To be honest, does it matter? As long as you have a list of the outputs, you can find what you're looking for