Are Mash distances always symmetric?

[donovan-h-parks]

Hi,

Are Mash distances and number of common kmers always symmetric? That is, genome 1 vs genome 2 gives the same results as genome 2 vs genome 1.

I believe this is true. If so, why does the Mash table report both cases? This effectively doubles the size of the output file and potentially indicates that twice the amount of required computation is occurring.

Thanks for any insights you can provide. Love Mash!

Cheers,
Donovan