Next Previous Up Contents
Next: Examples
Up: tcat: Table Concatenater
Previous: tcat: Table Concatenater

A.4.1 Usage

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: -]


Next Previous Up Contents
Next: Examples
Up: tcat: Table Concatenater
Previous: tcat: Table Concatenater

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