VCFtools contains a Perl API (Vcf.pm) and a number of Perl scripts that can be used to perform common tasks with VCF files such as file validation, file merging, intersecting, complements, etc. The Perl tools support all versions of the VCF specification (3.2, 3.3, 4.0, 4.1 and 4.2), nevertheless, the users are encouraged to use the latest versions VCFv4.1 or VCFv4.2. The VCFtools in general have been used mainly with diploid data, but the Perl tools aim to support polyploid data as well. Run any of the Perl scripts with the --help switch to obtain more help.
Many of the Perl scripts require that the VCF files are compressed by bgzip and indexed by tabix (both tools are part of the tabix package, available for download here). The VCF files can be compressed and indexed using the following commands
bgzip my_file.vcf
tabix -p vcf my_file.vcf.gz
