sambamba
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Description:
Tools for working with SAM/BAM data
Type: Formula  |  Tracked Since: Dec 28, 2025
Links: Homepage  |  formulae.brew.sh
Category: Other
Tags: bioinformatics genomics samtools bam data-processing
Install: brew install sambamba
About:
Sambamba is a high-performance tool for processing SAM/BAM genomic alignment files. It leverages the D programming language and multi-core parallelism to deliver significant speed improvements over traditional tools like samtools. Its primary value is accelerating common bioinformatics tasks such as sorting, indexing, and filtering large datasets.
Key Features:
  • Multi-core parallelism for fast processing
  • Memory-efficient streaming operations
  • Supports common operations: view, sort, index, flagstat
Use Cases:
  • Rapidly sorting and indexing large BAM files
  • Filtering alignments by flags or regions in parallel
  • Generating coverage statistics from aligned reads
Alternatives:
  • samtools – The industry standard; Sambamba offers a parallelized, often faster alternative for many operations.
  • picard – Java-based toolkit; Sambamba is generally faster and uses less memory for equivalent tasks.
Version History
Detected Version Rev Change Commit
Sep 17, 2025 3:03pm 0 VERSION_BUMP e1c03992
Sep 14, 2024 4:03pm 0 VERSION_BUMP 337390d8