VCFtools is a program package designed for working with VCF files,
such as those generated by the 1000 Genomes Project. The aim of
VCFtools is to provide methods for working with VCF files: validating,
merging, comparing and calculate some basic population genetic
statistics.

VCFtools supports the VCF format v4.0. The vcf-validator, Perl API and
scripts now support also VCF format v4.2 and maintain backward
compatibility with older versions.

If you make use of VCFtools in your research, the authors would
appreciate a citation of the following paper:

The Variant Call Format and VCFtools, 
Petr Danecek, Adam Auton, Goncalo Abecasis, Cornelis A. Albers, 
Eric Banks, Mark A. DePristo, Robert Handsaker, Gerton Lunter, 
Gabor Marth, Stephen T. Sherry, Gilean McVean, Richard Durbin 
and 1000 Genomes Project Analysis Group, Bioinformatics, 2011