Let's say you have just obtained your phylogenetic tree from FastTree. This tree will likely contain polytomies, and branch lengths that are so small that they will be represented in exponential notation. Some programs will not accept trees with these two features (e.g., ClusterPicker). You could remove the polytomies with the ape package in R. But how do you print the tree to standard out with the branch lengths in standard float format? You could submit an issue to the developers of your target program and hope they respond with a fix. Both of these options may delay your workflow. This program provides a python3 solution to your problems. Given a phylogenetic tree in newick format, budgitree provides an easy way to print your tree to stdout with:

1. Polytomies resolved (i.e., tree converted to strictly bifurcating) and/or
2. Exponential notation removed (i.e., branch lengths in float format with user-specified number of decimal places)
3. Collapse branches with support values less than the specified cutoff (default is do nothing)

$ budgitree
usage: budgitree [-h]  ...

Given a newick tree, use this program to resolve polytomies (convert to
bifurcating) and or change the formatting of branch lengths.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit

Sub-commands help:
  
    smuggle   Smuggle the budgie.
    version   Print version.
    test      Run test suite.

$ budgitree smuggle -h
usage: budgitree smuggle [-h] [-p PRECISION] [-b] [-c COLLAPSE] tree

Process the tree.

positional arguments:
  tree                  Input newick tree

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -p PRECISION, --precision PRECISION
                        Branch length precision (i.e., number of decimal
                        places to print).
  -b, --dont_bifurcate_polytomies
                        Switch off conversion of node polytomies to
                        bifurcating
  -c COLLAPSE, --collapse COLLAPSE
                        Collapse nodes with support values less than this.

Collapse branches with less than 0.5 support:

budgitree smuggle treefile.tre -c 0.50`

budgitree smuggle treefile.tre -p 20

If for some reason you would like to retain the polytomies, switch the feature off:

budgitree smuggle treefile.tre -b

Remove polytomies, print branch lengths to 15 decimal places, collapse nodes <0.5:

budgitree smuggle treefile.tre -p 15 -c 0.5

Using pip:

pip3 install budgitree

The development version:

pip3 install git+https://github.com/schultzm/Budgitree.git

Run the test suite to check the software works as intended:

budgitree test

Print the version to stdout:

budgitree version

The budgerigar, or "budgie", is an Australian bird (Melopsittacus undulatus), keeping with an Australian theme after @tseemann. The software sets digits on branches – if you are imaginative, that kind of sounds like budgit. tree is because it operates on phylogenetic trees. The smuggle feature of budgitree has to do with an Australian joke involving budgie and swimwear.