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A.2.1 Usage

The usage of multicone is

   stilts <stilts-flags> multicone ifmt=<in-format> istream=true|false
                                   icmd=<cmds> serviceurl=<value> ra=<expr>
                                   dec=<expr> sr=<expr> verb=1|2|3
                                   copycols=<colid-list> zerometa=true|false
                                   ocmd=<cmds> omode=<out-mode> <mode-args>
                                   out=<out-table> ofmt=<out-format>
                                   [in=]<table>

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:

copycols = <colid-list>
List of columns from the input table which are to be copied to the output table. Each column identified here will be prepended to the columns of the combined output table, and its value for each row taken from the input table row which provided the parameters of the query which produced it. See Section 5.3 for list syntax.
dec = <expr>
Expression which evaluates to the declination in degrees in the J2000 coordinate system for the request at each row of the input table. This will usually be the name or ID of a column in the input table, or a function involving one.
icmd = <cmds>
Commands to operate on the 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.
ifmt = <in-format>
Specifies the format of the 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)]
in = <table>
The location of the 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 ifmt parameter.
istream = true|false
If set true, the in table will be read as a stream. It is necessary to give the ifmt parameter in this case. Depending on the required operations and processing mode, this may cause the read to fail (sometimes it is necessary to read the input table more than once). It is not normally necessary to set this flag; in most cases the data will be streamed automatically if that is the best thing to do. However it can sometimes result in less resource usage when processing large files in certain formats (such as VOTable). [Default: false]
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: -]
ra = <expr>
Expression which evaluates to the right ascension in degrees in the J2000 coordinate system for the request at each row of the input table. This will usually be the name or ID of a column in the input table, or a function involving one.
serviceurl = <value>
The base part of a URL which defines the queries to be made. Additional parameters will be appended to this using CGI syntax ("name=value", separated by '&' characters). If this value does not end in either a '?' or a '&', one will be added as appropriate. Note that the regquery command can be used to locate the service URL for cone search services.
sr = <expr>
Expression which evaluates to the search radius in degrees for the request at each row of the input table. This will often be a constant numerical value, but may be the name or ID of a column in the input table, or a function involving one.
verb = 1|2|3
Verbosity level of the tables returned by the query service. A value of 1 indicates the bare minimum and 3 indicates all available information.
zerometa = true|false
Determines where the metadata for the output table comes from. If true, an initial query is made to the service with search radius set to zero. Cone search services are supposed to respond to such requests with a metadata-only table giving column information etc but no data. Unfortunately, many services in practice respond with metadata which is incommpatible with successful data queries, which means the other queries cannot be used by multicone. The default setting of false instead picks up the metadata from the first non-empty data request. This is less likely to fail, but doesn't stream data so well on output. [Default: false]


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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