Copying a catalogue

To generate a new copy of a catalogue type:

catcopy

The amount of textual information written to the output catalogue is controlled using the command line mechanism described in Section . You then answer the two prompts described below. In these descriptions the prompts are identified by the corresponding ADAM parameter name, which appears at the start of the prompt line.

CATIN

Enter the name of the input catalogue.

CATOUT

Enter the name of the output catalogue.

It is possible to use catcopy to generate a copy of a catalogue in the same format (FITS table, TST or STL) as the original, but there is little point in doing so; the same result can be achieved using the Unix command cp, which is much quicker. The real usefulness of catcopy is in converting a catalogue to a new format; that is, for example, converting a FITS table to an STL catalogue or vice versa.

catcopy has options to omit some or all of the parameters in the input catalogue from the output catalogue or to add new parameters to the output catalogue. To omit all the parameters from the output catalogue type:

catcopy  copypar=none

To omit (or `filter out') selected parameters type:

catcopy  copypar=filter

After being prompted for the input and output catalogues, CATIN and CATOUT, as above, you will be prompted for the following parameter:

PFILTER

Enter a comma-separated list of the parameters to filter out (that is, which are not to be copied).

Alternatively, this parameter can be given on the command line, for example:

catcopy  copypar=filter  pfilter=\'FSTATION,PLATESCA,TELFOCUS\'

Note that here the list of parameters must be enclosed in quotes, and each quote must be preceded by a backslash character, as shown, to prevent the quote being interpreted by the Unix shell. To add new parameters to the output catalogue type:

catcopy  addpar=true

An arbitrary number of new parameters can be added. After being prompted for the input and output catalogues, CATIN and CATOUT, you will be prompted to supply the following details for each parameter.

PNAME

Name of the parameter.

PARTYP

Data type of the parameter. The permitted types are: REAL, DOUBLE, INTEGER, LOGICAL and CHAR.

PCSIZE

Size of the parameter if it is of data type CHAR.

PVALUE

Value of the parameter.

PUNITS

Units of the parameter.

PCOMM

Comments describing the parameter.