Re: [Cdk-devel] is it valid to have an empty molecule in SDF file ?

[<U.F...@ch...>]

> Does anybody knows if an empty molecule (zero atoms,zero bonds) is a valid
> entry in an SDF file? Couldn't find anything  definitive in the SDF
> specification.
>
> MDLReader and IteratingMDLReader behave differently -
> MDLReader reads happily all the file including the empty molecule, but
> IteratingMDLReader consider it as the last molecule of the file (hasNext
> method return false if number of atoms is zero), even if there are many more.

I experienced the same problem with IteratingMDLReader. I term this a problem
because even if it is *not* valid to have an empty molecule in an SD file some
programs write such empty molecules (e.g. MOE). So, independent from the
validity of such an empty molecule it might be very useful to be able to read
such a molecule using IteratingMDLReader.

Uli