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5.2 Specifying a single column

If an argument is specified in the help text for a command with the symbol <col-id> it means you must give a string which identifies one of the existing columns in a table.

There are three ways you can specify a column in this context:

Column Name
The name of the column may be used if it contains no spaces and doesn't start with a minus character ('-'). It is usually matched case insensitively. If multiple columns have the same name, the first one that matches is selected.
Column Index or $ID
The index of the column may always be used; this is a useful fallback if the column name isn't suitable for some reason. The first column is '1', the second is '2' and so on. You may alternatively use the forms '$1', '$2' etc.

Tip: if counting which column has which index is giving you a headache, running tpipe with omode=meta or omode=stats on the table may help.


Next Previous Up Contents
Next: Specifying a list of columns
Up: Table Pipelines
Previous: Processing Filters

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