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4.1 Input Formats

Some of the tools in this package ask you to specify the format of input tables using the ifmt parameter. The following list gives the values usually allowed for this (matching is case-insensitive):

fits
FITS format - FITS binary or ASCII tables can be read. By default the first table HDU in the file will used, but this can be altered by supplying the HDU index after a '#' sign, so "table.fits#3" means the third HDU extension.
colfits
Column-oriented FITS format. This is where a table is stored as a BINTABLE extension which contains a single row, each cell of the row containing a whole column of the table it represents. This has different performance characteristics from normal FITS tables; in particular it may be considerably efficient for very large, and especially very wide tables where not all of the columns are required at any one time. Only available for uncompressed files on disk.
votable
VOTable format - any legal version 1.0 or 1.1 format VOTable documents, and many illegal ones, can be read. By default the first TABLE element is used, but this can be altered by supplying the 0-based index after a '#' sign, so "table.xml#4" means the fifth TABLE element in the document.
ascii
Plain text file with one row per column in which columns are separated by whitespace.
csv
Comma-Separated Values format, using approximately the conventions used by MS Excel.
ipac
IPAC Table Format.
wdc
World Datacentre Format (experimental).
For more details on these formats, see the descriptions in SUN/253.

In some cases (when using VOTable or FITS format tables) the tools can detect the table format automatically, and no explicit specification is necessary. If this isn't the case and you omit the format specification, the tool will fail with a suitable error message. It is always safe to specify the format explicitly; this will be slightly more efficient, and may lead to more helpful error messages in the case that the table can't be read correctly.


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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