XYZ Format

Read and write whitespace-delimited XYZ coordinate tables (molecular or point clouds).

Overview

Property	Value
Format id	xyz
Class	XYZIterable
Extensions	.xyz
Text format	Yes
Flat rows	Yes
Read	Yes
Write	Yes
Extra	none (stdlib)

Record shape

Each data row yields:

{"element": "O", "x": 0.0, "y": 0.0, "z": 0.0}

Optional trailing fields become extra_0, extra_1, …. An optional atom-count header and comment line are skipped on read and written on write.

Usage

from iterable import open_iterable

with open_iterable("molecule.xyz") as source:
    for row in source:
        print(row["element"], row["x"], row["y"], row["z"])

Error Handling

• Missing dependency: optional libraries raise ImportError with an install hint (pip install 'iterabledata[<extra>]' when an extra exists).
• Write mode: read-only formats raise WriteNotSupportedError or ValueError when opened with mode="w".
• Bad or unsupported input: may raise ValueError, OSError, or library-specific errors.
• See Troubleshooting for decoding, detection, and engine issues.

See also

• CIF — crystallographic atom sites
• PDB — Protein Data Bank atoms
• Supported formats

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Required	Description
encoding	str	'utf-8'	No	Passed via iterableargs.