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Some of the tools in this package ask you to specify the format
of input tables using the ifmt
parameter.
The following list gives the values usually allowed for this
(matching is case-insensitive):
fits
- FITS format - FITS binary or ASCII tables can be read.
For commands which take a single input table, by default the
first table HDU in the file will used, but this can
be altered for multi-extension FITS files by supplying
an identifier after a '#' sign.
The identifier can be either an HDU index or the extension name
(EXTNAME header, possibly followed by "-" and the EXTVER header),
so "table.fits#3" means the third HDU extension, and
"table.fits#UV_DATA" means the HDU with the value "UV_DATA" for its
EXTNAME header card.
colfits
- Column-oriented FITS format. This is where a table is stored as
a BINTABLE extension which contains a single row, each cell of the
row containing a whole column of the table it represents.
This has different performance characteristics from normal FITS tables;
in particular it may be considerably more efficient for very large, and
especially very wide tables where not all of the columns are required
at any one time.
Only likely to be efficient for uncompressed files on disk.
votable
- VOTable format - any legal version 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 or 1.3 format
VOTable documents, and many illegal ones, can be read.
For commands which take a single input table, by default the first
TABLE
element in the document is used, but this can be
altered by supplying the 0-based index after a '#
' sign,
so "table.xml#4" means the fifth TABLE
element in the document.
cdf
- NASA Common Data Format.
CDF is described at http://cdf.gsfc.nasa.gov/.
ascii
- Plain text file with one row per column
in which columns are separated by whitespace.
csv
- Comma-Separated Values format,
using approximately the conventions used by MS Excel.
gbin
- Special-interest GBIN format for internal use by the DPAC
consortium in relation to the Gaia astrometry satellite.
Additional classes (data model and GaiaTools GBIN reader)
are required on the classpath at runtime to use this format
(e.g.
stilts -classpath MDBExplorerStandalone.jar
or java -classpath stilts.jar:MDBExplorerStandalone.jar
uk.ac.starlink.ttools.Stilts
).
tst
- Tab-Separated Table format,
as used by Starlink's GAIA and ESO's SkyCat amongst other tools.
ipac
- IPAC Table Format.
wdc
- World Datacentre Format (experimental).
For more details on these formats, see the descriptions in
SUN/253.
In some cases (when using VOTable, FITS, CDF or GBIN format tables) the
tools can detect the table format automatically, and no explicit
specification is necessary. If this isn't the case and you omit
the format specification, the tool will fail with a suitable error
message. It is always safe to specify the format explicitly;
this will be slightly more efficient,
and may lead to more helpful error messages in the case that the
table can't be read correctly.
Next Previous Up Contents
Next: Output Formats
Up: Table Formats
Previous: Table Formats
STILTS - Starlink Tables Infrastructure Library Tool Set
Starlink User Note256
STILTS web page:
http://www.starlink.ac.uk/stilts/
Author email:
m.b.taylor@bristol.ac.uk
Mailing list:
topcat-user@jiscmail.ac.uk