It does this by noting the functional groups that the program belongs to and reporting any programs which share those functional groups.
The functional groups of a program are set in the ACD file (this is the part of the program in the EMBOSS system which specifies the required parameters, some help on the parameters, the one-line description of the program, etc.) Normally the names of the groups are fairly specific, such as: "NUCLEIC COMPOSITION", resulting in the reporting of only a tightly restricted set of other programs also dealing with the analysis of "NUCLEIC COMPOSITION". The '-explode' qualifier will increase the number of groups that the program belongs to by splitting the group name at selected points to produce such groups as: "NUCLEIC", "NUCLEIC COMPOSITION" and "COMPOSITION". All programs with the exploded group names which also include "NUCLEIC" and "COMPOSITION" will now be reported. The result of this qualifier is thus a report of a larger number of programs with a more tenuous link to the specified program. In other words, use the '-explode' qualifier to decrease the specificity of the search.
The groups that the program belongs to can be output by using the '-groups' qualifier.
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The result is header line 'SEE ALSO' then a simple list of program names followed by the one-line description of the program.
If the '-html' qualifier is used, then the result is an HTML-formatted table, lacking the HTML document structures such as <HTML>, <BODY>, </BODY>, </HTML> which the user is expected to provide as the table will usually be included in the middle of a larger HTML document.
FATAL ERROR: No application specified.is output if a non-existent program name is specified.