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The location of tables for input and output are usually given using
the in
and out
parameters respectively.
These are often, but not always, filenames. The possibilities are these:
-
Filename
- Very often, you will simply specify a filename as location, and
the tool will just read from/write to it in the usual way.
-
URL
- Tables can be read from URLs directly, and in some cases written
to them as well. Some non-standard URL protocols are supported
as well as the usual ones. The list is:
-
http:
- Read from HTTP resources.
-
ftp:
- Read from anonymous FTP resources.
-
file:
- Read from local files; not particularly useful since you can
do much the same using just the filename.
-
jar:
- Specialised protocol for looking inside Java Archive files -
see JarURLConnection documentation.
-
myspace:
- Accesses files in the AstroGrid "MySpace" virtual file store.
These URLs look something like
"
myspace:/survey/iras_psc.xml
",
and can access files in the myspace are that the user is currently
logged into.
These URLs can be used for both input and output of tables.
To use them you must have an AstroGrid account and the AstroGrid
WorkBench or similar must be running; if you're not currently
logged in a dialogue will pop up to ask you for name and
password.
-
ivo:
- Understands ivo-type URLs which signify files in the
AstroGrid "MySpace" virtual file store.
These URLs look something like
"
ivo://uk.ac.le.star/filemanager#node-2583
".
These URLs can be used for both input and output of tables.
To use them you must have an AstroGrid account and the AstroGrid
WorkBench or similar must be running; if you're not currently
logged in a dialogue will pop up to ask you for name and
password.
-
jdbc:
- Used for communicating with SQL-compliant relational databases.
These are a bit different to normal URLs -
see section Section 3.4.
-
Minus sign ("
-
")
- The special location "-" (minus sign) indicates standard input
(for reading) or standard output (for writing).
This allows you to use STILTS commands in a normal Unix pipeline.
In any of these cases, for input locations compression is taken care
of automatically. That means that you can give the filename or URL
of a file which is compressed using gzip
, bzip2
or Unix compress
and the program will uncompress it on the fly.
Next Previous Up Contents
Next: Table Formats
Up: Table I/O
Previous: Table I/O
STILTS - Starlink Tables Infrastructure Library Tool Set
Starlink User Note256
STILTS web page:
http://www.starlink.ac.uk/stilts/
Author email:
m.b.taylor@bristol.ac.uk