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B.2 Version History

Releases to date have been as follows:

Version 0.1b (29 April 2005)
First public release
Version 0.2b (30 June 2005)
Version 1.0b (30 September 2005)
This is the first non-experimental release of STILTS, and it incorporates major changes and backward incompatibilities since version 0.2b.

Parameter system
The parameter system has undergone a complete rewrite; there is now only a single command "stilts", invoked using the stilts script or the stilts.jar jar file, and the various tasks are named as subsequent arguments on the command line. Command arguments are supplied after that. The new invocation syntax is described in detail elsewhere in this document. As well as invocation features such as improved on-line help, optional prompting, parameter defaulting, and more uniform access to common features, this will make it more straightforward to wrap these tasks for use in non-command-line environments, such as behind a SOAP or CORBA interface, or in a CEA-like execution environment.
Crossmatching
A new command tmatch2 has been introduced. This provides flexible and efficient crossmatching between two input tables. Future releases will provide commands for intra-table and multi-table matching.
Concatentation
A new command tcat has been introduced, which allows two tables to be glued together top-to-bottom. This is currently working but very rudimentary - improvements will be forthcoming in future releases.
Calculator
A new utility command calc has been introduced, which performs one-line expression evaluations from the command line.
Pipeline filters
The following new filter commands for use in tpipe and other commands have been introduced:
  • addskycoords: calculates new celestial coordinate pair from existing ones (FK4, FK5, ecliptic, galactic, supergalactic)
  • replacecol: replaces column data, using existing metadata
  • badval: replaces given 'magic' value with null
  • replaceval: replaces given 'magic' value with any specified value
  • tablename: edits table name
  • explodecols and explodecols commands replace explode

The new stream parameter of tpipe now allows you to write filter commands in an external file, to facilitate more manageable command lines.

Wildarding for column specification is now allowed for some filter commands.

Algebraic functions
  • New functions for converting time values between different coordinate systems (Modified Julian Date, ISO-8601, Julian Epoch and Besselian Epoch).
  • New RANDOM special function.
Documentation
SUN/256 has undergone many changes. Much of the tool documentation is now automatically generated from the code itself, which goes a long way to ensuring that the documentation is correct with respect to the current state of the code.


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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