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2.4 Getting help

As well as the command descriptions in this document (especially the reference section Appendix A) you can get help for STILTS usage from the command itself. Typing

   stilts -help
results in this output:
   Usage:
      stilts [-help] [-version] [-verbose] [-disk] [-debug] [-prompt] [-batch]
             <task-name> <task-args>

      stilts <task-name> help[=<param-name>]

      Known tasks:
         calc
         tcat
         tcopy
         tcube
         tmatch2
         tpipe
         votcopy
         votlint

For help on the individual tasks, including their parameter lists, you can supply the word help after the task name, so for instance

   stilts tcopy help
results in
   Usage: tcopy ifmt=<in-format> ofmt=<out-format>
                [in=]<in-table> [out=]<out-table>

Finally, you can get help on any of the parameters of a task by writing help=<param-name>, like this:

   stilts tcopy help=in
gives
   Help for parameter IN in task TCOPY
   -----------------------------------

      Name:
         in

      Usage:
         [in=]<in-table>

      Summary:
         Location of input table

      Description:
         The location of the input table. This is usually a filename or URL,
         and may point to a file compressed in one of the supported compression
         formats (Unix compress, gzip or bzip2). If it is omitted, or equal to
         the special value "-", the input table will be read from standard
         input. In this case the input format must be given explicitly using
         the ifmt parameter. 

In some cases, as described in Section 2.3, you will be prompted for the value of a parameter with a line something like this:

   matcher - Name of matching algorithm [sky]:
In this case, if you enter "help" or a question mark, then the parameter help entry will be printed to the screen, and the prompt will be repeated.

For more detailed descriptions of the tasks, which includes explanatory comments and examples as well as the information above, see the full task descriptions in the Command Reference.


Next Previous Up Contents
Next: Invocation
Up: The stilts command
Previous: Task Arguments

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