Handlers

Handlers are responsible for reading and parsing ReaxFF files into structured Python objects.

Each handler:

• Corresponds to one specific file type
• Converts raw text into a clean pandas.DataFrame
• Optionally exposes frame-based access for trajectory-like files
• Performs no analysis or plotting

Common Handler Contract

All handlers follow the same high-level API:

handler = SomeHandler("file_name")

df = handler.dataframe()     # main tabular data
meta = handler.metadata()    # parsed metadata

Some handlers additionally support:

• n_frames()
• frame(i)
• iter_frames(step=...)

Exact behavior is documented per handler.

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What Handlers Do (and Don’t)

✅ Parse raw files

✅ Normalize column names and aliases

✅ Drop duplicated iterations when appropriate

❌ No physics interpretation

❌ No plotting

❌ No CLI logic

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