Fragman and seqinr have their own (identical?, different from sangerseqR) read.abif fxns. Trying to use this as a model for the reverse process I don't get anywhere ... any suggestions? Here is some of what i have done:

##### read binary as in Fragman's read.abif function #####

fh <- file("input.ab1", open="rb")
fh
                        description                      class
                          "input.ab1"                      "file"
                                 mode                       text
                                 "rb"                   "binary"
                              opened                   can read
                            "opened"                      "yes"
                          can write
                                 "no"
rd <- readBin(fh, what="raw", n=1.2 *file.info("pGem-CP1-1768794_H12.ab1")$size), endian="little")

# rd is hexadecimal

##### check what was imported #####

summary(rd)
    Length  Class   Mode
    291025    raw    raw

##### import the data as it would be worked on #####

library(Fragman)

abif <- read.abif("input.ab1")
summary(abif)
              Length Class      Mode
    Header     10    -none-     list
    Directory   7    data.frame list
    Data      130    -none-     list

##### try to write binary with the imported data #####

newfh <- file("new.ab1", "wb")
newfh
    description       class        mode        text      opened    can read
      "new.ab1"      "file"        "wb"    "binary"    "opened"        "no"
      can write
          "yes"

writeBin(abif, newfh, endian="little")
    Error in writeBin(abif, newfh, endian = "little") :
      can only write vector objects
writeBin(as.vector(abif), newfh, endian="little")
    Error in writeBin(as.vector(abif), newfh, endian = "little") :
      can only write vector objects
writeBin(as.vector(unlist(abif)), newfh, endian="little")
close(newfh)

# ab1 file is written but cannot be read as ab1

input.ab1 ~ 291kb newer.ab1 ~ 503kb