INFO CIPOS Number=2xA

[rkimoakbioinformatics]

In VCFv4.5, the number of CIPOS entries should be two times the number of ALT alleles. However, its Number is defined to be .. This makes it hard to figure out how to parse such meta-information lines automatically.

How about 2xA to indicate two times the number of ALT alleles?

In the same way, we can do

##INFO=<ID=MEINFO,Number=4xA,Type=String,Description="Mobile element info of the form NAME,START,END,POLARITY">
##INFO=<ID=METRANS,Number=4xA,Type=String,Description="Mobile element transduction info of the form CHR,START,END,POLARITY">

We can use numberxcharacter/number format to write the following as well.

##INFO=<ID=xxxx,Number=2xR,Type=...>
##INFO=<ID=xxxx,Number=4xG,Type=...>