What is SMILES?

The Simplified Molecular-Input Line-Entry System (SMILES) is a specification in the form of a line notation for describing the structure of chemical species using short ASCII strings (opensmiles.org).

SMILES notation consists of a series of characters containing no spaces. Hydrogen atoms may be omitted (hydrogen-suppressed graphs) or included (hydrogen-complete graphs). Aromatic structures may be specified directly or in Kekulé form.

SMILES strings can be imported by most molecule editors for conversion back into two-dimensional drawings or three-dimensional models of the molecules.

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