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Feature request: command-line tool to view binary tables #3022
Description
As discussed in this Twitter conversation: https://twitter.com/alexavillaume/status/518096636313346049 - the world would be a better place if we all used binary tables instead of ASCII, but the issue is that ASCII tables are so damn convenient to view quickly. But what if we created a simple command-line script that basically uses Table.read to read in a binary table, then uses Table.more() to display it?
$ table-more mytable.xml
col1 col2 col3 col4 ... col7 col8 col9 col10
------------------------- ------ ------- ------- ... ---- ----- ---- -----
SSTGLMC G000.0046+01.1431 0.0046 1.1432 265.299 ... 5.04 6.89 5.22 N
SSTGLMC G000.0106-00.7315 0.0106 -0.7314 267.127 ... 6.07 -- 5.17 Y
SSTGLMC G000.0110-01.0237 0.011 -1.0236 267.415 ... 6.3 8.34 6.32 N
SSTGLMC G000.0115-01.2781 0.0115 -1.278 267.666 ... 6.84 8.3 6.87 N
SSTGLMC G000.0127-01.2146 0.0127 -1.2146 267.604 ... 5.53 6.58 5.51 N
SSTGLMC G000.0177-01.8424 0.0177 -1.8423 268.229 ... 8.04 10.1 8.04 N
SSTGLMC G000.0371+01.6473 0.0371 1.6475 264.834 ... 5.2 -- 4.7 Y
SSTGLMC G000.0408-00.7197 0.0408 -0.7196 267.134 ... 6.0 10.77 5.99 N
SSTGLMC G000.0540-00.7328 0.054 -0.7327 267.154 ... 6.91 8.09 6.9 N
SSTGLMC G000.0566-00.7363 0.0567 -0.7363 267.159 ... 7.9 9.4 7.83 N
SSTGLMC G000.0570+01.2494 0.0571 1.2495 265.228 ... 8.88 10.37 8.95 N
It could of course take options to specify the table ID/name in multi-table files. Could be pretty handy!
Reacted by Simon Conseil
Activity
embray commentedon Oct 9, 2014
👍
Actually, this is very related to an idea I've had mulling in my head for a long while to build a command-line tool for viewing FITS files--both the header and the data. Basically an extension of
fitsheaderto also show binary data. There are times where this would be very useful to me (often I just inspect FITS files in a hex editor but that's not always as convenient).So I might consider something a little broader than just tables, although tables should certainly play an important part in that.
pllim commentedon Oct 9, 2014
For FITS table, in IRAF, there are the
tprintandtdumpcommands.mhvk commentedon Oct 9, 2014
For FITS more generally, there is HEASOFT's command-line tool
fv. It does quite well with tables especially.saimn commentedon Oct 13, 2017
I was looking for a similar script, an alternative to ESO's dtfits script which is handy to get a quick view on a FITS file or grep a specific line. So I'm starting to write something, should be easy with
Table:)