Resolving the nature of the reactive sites of phenylsulfinate (PhSO 2-) with a single general-purpose reactivity indicator.

The general-purpose reactivity indicator (GPRI) is utilized to discern the reactive sites of the phenylsulfinate ion, PhSO 2-, both in isolation and with a sodium counterion. While some approaches based on the hard/soft acid/base (HSAB) principle fail to indicate that the oxygens are the hard (electrostatic) sites of the molecule and that the sulfur is the soft (electron-transfer) site of phenylsufinate, the GPRI succeeds. A computer code, written in Fortran, that computes the general-purpose reactivity indicator is released in the supplementary information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]