export_mothur_dist: Export a distance object as .names and .dist files for mothur
Description
The purpose of this function is to allow a user to easily export a distance object
as a pair of files that can be immediately imported by mothur for OTU clustering
and related analysis. A distance object can be created in R in a number of
ways, including via cataloguing the cophentic distances of a tree object.
(Required). A "dist" object, or a symmetric matrix.
out
(Optional). The desired output filename for the .dist file, OR
left NULL, the default, in which case the mothur-formated distance table
is returned to R standard out.
makeTrivialNamesFile
(Optional). Default NULL. The desired name of the .names file.
If left NULL, the file name will be a modified version of the out argument.
Value
A character vector of the different cutoff values contained in the file.
For a given set of arguments to the cluster() command from within
mothur, a number of OTU-clustering results are returned in the same
list file. The exact cutoff values used by mothur can vary depending
on the input data. This simple function returns the cutoffs that were actually
included in the mothur output. This an important extra step prior to
importing the OTUs with the import_mothur_otulist() function.