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The usage of tcat
is
stilts <stilts-flags> tcat ifmt1=<in-format> ifmt2=<in-format> icmd1=<cmds>
icmd2=<cmds> ocmd=<cmds>
omode=<out-mode> <mode-args> out=<out-table>
ofmt=<out-format>
[in1=]<table1> [in2=]<table2>
If you don't have the stilts
script installed,
write "java -jar stilts.jar
" instead of
"stilts
" - see Section 3.
The available <stilts-flags>
are listed
in Section 2.1.
Parameter values are assigned on the command line
as explained in Section 2.3.
They are as follows:
-
icmd1 = <cmds>
- Commands to operate on the
first input table, before any other
processing takes place.
The value of this parameter is one or more of the filter commands
described in Section 5.1.
If more than one is given, they must be separated by
semicolon characters (";").
This parameter can be repeated multiple times on the same
command line to build up a list of processing steps.
The sequence of commands given in this way
defines the processing pipeline which is performed on the table.
-
icmd2 = <cmds>
- Commands to operate on the
second input table, before any other
processing takes place.
The value of this parameter is one or more of the filter commands
described in Section 5.1.
If more than one is given, they must be separated by
semicolon characters (";").
This parameter can be repeated multiple times on the same
command line to build up a list of processing steps.
The sequence of commands given in this way
defines the processing pipeline which is performed on the table.
-
ifmt1 = <in-format>
- Specifies the format of the first input table
(one of the known formats listed in Section 4.1).
This flag can be used if you know what format your input
table is in.
If it has the special value
(auto)
(the default),
then an attempt will be
made to detect the format of the table automatically.
This cannot always be done correctly however, in which case
the program will exit with an error explaining which
formats were attempted.
[Default: (auto)
]
-
ifmt2 = <in-format>
- Specifies the format of the second input table
(one of the known formats listed in Section 4.1).
This flag can be used if you know what format your input
table is in.
If it has the special value
(auto)
(the default),
then an attempt will be
made to detect the format of the table automatically.
This cannot always be done correctly however, in which case
the program will exit with an error explaining which
formats were attempted.
[Default: (auto)
]
-
in1 = <table1>
- The location of the first 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
ifmt1
parameter.
-
in2 = <table2>
- The location of the second 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
ifmt2
parameter.
-
ocmd = <cmds>
- Commands to operate on the output table,
after all other processing has taken place.
The value of this parameter is one or more of the filter commands
described in Section 5.1.
If more than one is given, they must be separated by
semicolon characters (";").
This parameter can be repeated multiple times on the same
command line to build up a list of processing steps.
The sequence of commands given in this way
defines the processing pipeline which is performed on the table.
-
ofmt = <out-format>
- Specifies the format in which the output table will be written
(one of the ones in Section 4.2 - matching is
case-insensitive and you can use just the first few letters).
If it has the special value
"
(auto)
"
(the default),
then the output filename will be
examined to try to guess what sort of file is required
usually by looking at the extension.
If it's not obvious from the filename what output format is
intended, an error will result.
This parameter must only be given if
omode
has its default value of "out
".
[Default: (auto)
]
-
omode = <out-mode> <mode-args>
- The mode in which the result table will be output.
The default mode is
out
, which means that
the result will be written as a new table to disk or elsewhere,
as determined by the out
and ofmt
parameters.
However, there are other possibilities, which correspond
to uses to which a table can be put other than outputting it,
such as displaying metadata, calculating statistics,
or populating a table in an SQL database.
For some values of this parameter, additional parameters
(<mode-args>
)
are required to determine the exact behaviour.
Possible values are out
, meta
, stats
, count
, cgi
, discard
, topcat
, plastic
and tosql
.
Use the help=omode
flag
or see Section 5.4 for more information.
[Default: out
]
-
out = <out-table>
- The location of the output table. This is usually a filename
to write to.
If it is equal to the special value "-" (the default)
the output table will be written to standard output.
This parameter must only be given if
omode
has its default value of "out
".
[Default: -
]
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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