Files ex1.* were originally from the pysam project. File ex1.fa contains two sequences cut from the human genome build36. They were extracted with command: samtools faidx human_b36.fa 2:2043966-2045540 20:67967-69550 Sequence names were changed manually for simplicity. File ex1.sam.gz contains MAQ alignments extracted with: (samtools view NA18507_maq.bam 2:2044001-2045500; samtools view NA18507_maq.bam 20:68001-69500) and processed with `samtools fixmate' to make it self-consistent as a standalone alignment, and then converted to ex1.bam using `samtools import'. Files ex1_header.* were derived from ex1.* by adding a SAM header (@HD and @SQ lines). The contents of File ex1_refresh.bam are the same as ex1_header.bam but it was generated with a newer version of samtools, and uses a different BGZF block strategy. The older file ex1_header.bam has all its blocks the same size (64KB), the newer file ex1_refresh.bam gives the header its own block and also avoids splitting reads between blocks.