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2.1 Stilts flags

Some flags are common to all the tasks in the STILTS package, and these are specified after the stilts invocation itself and before the task name. They generally have the same effect regardless of which task is running. These generic flags are as follows:

-help
Prints a usage message for the stilts command itself and exits. The message contains a listing of all the known tasks.
-version
Prints the STILTS version number and exits.
-verbose
Causes more verbose information to be written during operation. Specifically, what this does is to boost the logging level by one notch. It may be specified multiple times to increase verbosity further.
-disk
Encourages the command to use temporary files on disk for caching large amounts of data rather than doing it in memory. This is a good flag to try if you are running out of memory. This flag is in most cases equivalent to specifying the system property -Dstartable.storage=disk.
-debug
Sets up output suitable for debugging. The most visible consequence of this is that if an error occurs then a full stacktrace is output, rather than just a user-friendly report.
-prompt
Most of the STILTS commands have a number of parameters which will assume sensible defaults if you do not give them explicit values on the command line. If you use the -prompt flag, then you will be prompted for every parameter you have not explicitly specified to give you an opportunity to enter a value other than the default.
-batch
Some parameters will prompt you for their values, even if they offer legal defaults. If you use the -batch flag, then you won't be prompted at all.

If you are submitting an error report, please include the result of running stilts -version and the output of the troublesome command with the -debug flag specified.


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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