Although this example is delimited with spaces for consistent visualiztion, in a PCL file each element would be delimited by one tab.

Here is an example of a very small PCL file.

ID      Kingdom   Genus        Sample 1  Sample 2
Cohort  NA        NA           Test      Control
Age     NA        NA           34        43
1232    Bacteria  Bacteroides  .23       .16
543     Bacteria  Dorea        .001      .0021

These are the different parts of the PCL file.

ID                Feature metadata ID     Last feature metadata ID    sample ID          sample ID
Metadata ID       NA                      NA                          sample metadata    sample metadata
Last metadata ID  NA                      NA                          sample metadata    sample metadata
Feature ID        Feature (row) metadata  Feature (row) metadata      Data measurement   Data measurement
Feature ID        Feature (row) metadata  Feature (row) metadata      Data measurement   Data measurement
