The Enhanced Character Separated Values format was developed within the Astropy project and is described at https://github.com/astropy/astropy-APEs/blob/master/APE6.rst. It is composed of a YAML header followed by a CSV-like body, and is intended to be a human-readable and maybe even human-writable format with rich metadata. Most of the useful per-column and per-table metadata is preserved when de/serializing to this format. The version supported by this writer is currently ECSV 0.9.
ECSV does not support array-valued columns, so this format is not suitable for writing array data in tables.
ECSV allows either a space or a comma for delimiting values,
controlled by the delimiter
configuration option.
If ecsv(delimiter=comma)
is used, then removing
the YAML header will leave a CSV file that can be interpreted
by the CSV inputhandler or imported into other
CSV-capable applications.
The handler behaviour may be modified by specifying
one or more comma-separated name=value configuration options
in parentheses after the handler name, e.g.
"ecsv(delimiter=comma)
".
The following options are available:
delimiter = comma|space
space
" or "comma
".If no output format is explicitly chosen,
writing to a filename with
the extension ".ecsv
" (case insensitive)
will select ECSV
format for output.
An example looks like this:
# %ECSV 0.9 # --- # datatype: # - # name: RECNO # datatype: int32 # - # name: SPECIES # datatype: string # - # name: NAME # datatype: string # description: How one should address the animal in public & private. # - # name: LEGS # datatype: int32 # meta: # utype: anatomy:limb # - # name: HEIGHT # datatype: float64 # unit: m # meta: # VOTable precision: 2 # - # name: MAMMAL # datatype: bool # meta: # Description: Some animals # Author: Mark Taylor RECNO SPECIES NAME LEGS HEIGHT MAMMAL 1 pig "Pigling Bland" 4 0.8 True 2 cow Daisy 4 2.0 True 3 goldfish Dobbin "" 0.05 False 4 ant "" 6 0.001 False 5 ant "" 6 0.001 False 6 "queen ant" Ma'am 6 0.002 False 7 human Mark 2 1.8 True
The handler class for this format is
EcsvTableWriter
.