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A.2.1.1 Input Specifier

The input specifier determines the input table on which the processing will be performed. It has the form:

    [-ifmt <in-format> [-stream]] <in-table>
which is interpreted as follows:
-ifmt <in-format>
<in-format> is the name of one of the input formats described in Section 3.1. If the -ifmt flag is not used, auto format-detection is used (OK for FITS and VOTables). For other formats, such as CSV or ASCII, you must name a format using this flag.

If you give an unknown format (e.g. -ifmt help) a list of the formats that are known will be printed.

-stream
This flag can be specified to ensure that the input table is read as a stream. You need the -ifmt flag in this case. Depending on the required operations and processing mode, this may fail (sometimes you need to read the input file more than once) - if so specifying -cache near the start of the filter specifiers may help. It is not normally necessary to specify this flag - in most cases the data will be streamed automatically if that is the best thing to do.
<in-table>
Names the input table. May be "-" to specify standard input (in which case -stream is implicit).


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STILTS - Starlink Tables Infrastructure Library Tool Set
Starlink User Note 256
STILTS web page: http://www.starlink.ac.uk/stilts/
Author email: m.b.taylor@bristol.ac.uk