einfo

name	einfo
description	Use when you need to discover available NCBI Entrez databases, explore searchable fields within a specific database, or identify cross-database links for building EDirect queries.
disable-model-invocation	true
user-invocable	true

einfo

Quick Start

• Command: einfo [options]
• Local executable: /home/vimalinx/miniforge3/envs/bio/bin/einfo
• Full reference: See references/help.md for complete options and XML output examples

When To Use This Tool

• Discover which Entrez databases exist.
• Inspect searchable fields before writing a nontrivial esearch query.
• Enumerate cross-database link names before using elink.
• Use this as the schema-discovery step for EDirect pipelines.

Common Patterns

# 1) List all available databases
einfo -dbs

# 2) Inspect searchable fields for PubMed
einfo -db pubmed -fields

# 3) Inspect available link names from PubMed
einfo -db pubmed -links

Recommended Workflow

1. Use -dbs when you are unsure which Entrez database holds the data you want.
2. Use -fields before constructing advanced esearch expressions.
3. Use -links before writing elink -name ... pipelines.
4. Keep a copy of useful field or link names in the project docs if the workflow will be reused.

Guardrails

• einfo is metadata discovery, not record retrieval.
• The -db argument accepts a specific database or all, but using -dbs first is usually safer.
• Output is XML-oriented; use xtract if you need structured extraction.
• Field and link names are authoritative here, so rely on them instead of guessing Entrez syntax.