As well as the command descriptions in this document (especially the reference section Appendix B) you can get help for STILTS usage from the command itself. Typing
stilts -helpresults in this output:
Usage: stilts [-help] [-version] [-verbose] [-allowunused] [-prompt] [-bench] [-debug] [-batch] [-memory] [-disk] [-memgui] [-checkversion <vers>] [-stdout <file>] [-stderr <file>] <task-name> <task-args> stilts <task-name> help[=<param-name>|*] Known tasks: arrayjoin calc cdsskymatch cone coneskymatch datalinklint funcs pixfoot pixsample plot2d plot3d plothist regquery server sqlclient sqlskymatch sqlupdate taplint tapquery tapresume tapskymatch tcat tcatn tcopy tcube tgridmap tgroup tjoin tloop tmatch1 tmatch2 tmatchn tmulti tmultin tpipe tskymap tskymatch2 votcopy votlint xsdvalidate plot2plane plot2sky plot2cube plot2sphere plot2corner plot2time
For help on the individual tasks, including their parameter lists,
you can supply the word help
after the task name, so for instance
stilts tcopy helpresults in
Usage: tcopy ifmt=<in-format> ofmt=<out-format> [in=]<table> [out=]<out-table>
Finally, you can get help on any of the parameters of a task
by writing help=<param-name>
, like this:
stilts tcopy help=ingives
Help for parameter IN in task TCOPY ----------------------------------- Name: in Usage: [in=]<table> Summary: Location of input table Description: The location of the input table. This may take one of the following forms: * A filename. * A URL. * The special value "-", meaning standard input. In this case the input format must be given explicitly using the ifmt parameter. Note that not all formats can be streamed in this way. * A scheme specification of the form :<scheme-name>:<scheme-args>. * A system command line with either a "<" character at the start, or a "|" character at the end ("<syscmd" or "syscmd|"). This executes the given pipeline and reads from its standard output. This will probably only work on unix-like systems. In any case, compressed data in one of the supported compression formats (gzip, Unix compress or bzip2) will be decompressed transparently. Type: uk.ac.starlink.table.StarTableIf you use "
*
" instead of a parameter name in this usage,
help for all the parameters will be printed. Note that in most shells
you will probably need to quote the asterisk, so you should write
stilts tcopy help='*'
In some cases, as described in Section 2.3, you will be prompted for the value of a parameter with a line something like this:
matcher - Name of matching algorithm [sky]:In this case, if you enter "
help
" or a question mark,
then the parameter help entry will be printed to the screen, and
the prompt will be repeated.
For more detailed descriptions of the tasks, which includes explanatory comments and examples as well as the information above, see the full task descriptions in the Command Reference.