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#### 4.1.1 Input Formats

Loading table into TOPCAT from files or URLs is done either using the Load Table dialogue or one of its sub-windows, or from the command line when you start the program. For some file formats (e.g. FITS, VOTable, CDF), the format can be automatically determined by looking at the file content, regardless of filename; for others (e.g. CSV files with a "`.csv`" extension), TOPCAT may be able to use the filename as a hint to guess the format (the details of these rules are given in the format-specific subsections below). In other cases though, you will have to specify the format that the file is in. In the Load Window, there is a selection box from which you can choose the format, and from the command line you use the `-f` flag - see Section 10 for details. You can always specify the format rather than using automatic detection if you prefer - this is slightly more efficient, and may give you a more detailed error message if a table fails to load.

In either case, table locations may be given as filenames or as URLs, and any data compression (gzip, unix compress and bzip2) will be automatically detected and dealt with - see Section 4.2.

Some of the formats (e.g. FITS, VOTable) are capable of storing more than one table; usually loading such files loads all the tables into TOPCAT. If you want to specify only a single table, you can give a position indicator either after a "`#`" sign at the end of the filename or using the Position in file field in the Filestore Browser or similar. The details of the syntax for this is given in the relevant format description below.

The following sections describe the table formats which TOPCAT can read.

- 4.1.1.1 FITS
- 4.1.1.2 Column-oriented FITS
- 4.1.1.3 VOTable
- 4.1.1.4 CDF
- 4.1.1.5 CSV
- 4.1.1.6 ECSV
- 4.1.1.7 ASCII
- 4.1.1.8 IPAC
- 4.1.1.9 PDS4
- 4.1.1.10 MRT
- 4.1.1.11 Parquet
- 4.1.1.12 HAPI
- 4.1.1.13 Feather
- 4.1.1.14 GBIN
- 4.1.1.15 TST
- 4.1.1.16 Ver
- 4.1.1.17 World Data Center

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TOPCAT - Tool for OPerations on Catalogues And Tables
Starlink User Note253
TOPCAT web page: http://www.starlink.ac.uk/topcat/
Author email: m.b.taylor@bristol.ac.uk
Mailing list: topcat-user@jiscmail.ac.uk