You can do things like look up, using PubChem's API, similar molecules etc to a SMILES string.
I believe most molecule editors can load and save SMILES.
SELFIES are for genAI. If you ask a VAE to generate SMILES, it will spit out some strings that are invalid - can't happen with SELFIES, that is the one application where they are robust.
Was thinking of InChI[0] but on Googling SMILES and SELFIES I found this[1] talk, this[2] paper and my goodness I've been down a few rabbit holes since...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Chemical_Identif... [1] https://www.inchi-trust.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/18... [2] https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2022/dd/d1dd0001...
whitten•1h ago