Version 1.2 (2000 February 20)
autolog prints a formatted synopsis of the contents of a FITS header based on a format file containing a list of header keywords to extract, the format to use, and a heading. The output is a single line of text for each file on the command line piped to stdout.
The output format is designed to facilitate compiling a table of the contents of a large number of FITS files. autolog can be used as-is or with a wrapper script. For example, autolog is used by the autologger wrapper script run by the caliban transfer-disk daemon to generate a running observing log of all files written by the OSU data-taking system during a night.
autolog [-H] [-Ffmtfile] [-s] fits1 fits2 ...where:
autolog *.fitswill print a formatted log of all *.fits files in the current working directory to stdout.
Create a log file named "night01.log" using all *.fits file in the directory /home4/ritchey/data/, using format file nt01.fmt for the output format.
% autolog -Fnt01.fmt *.fits >night01.logCreate a log file "foo.log" for all files foo.001 through foo.029 in the current working directory. Use the format file foo.fmt.
% autolog -Ffoo.fmt foo.0[0-2][0-9] >foo.logLater, append entries for files foo.030 through foo.061 to foo.log, but suppress printing the header over again:
% autolog -H -Ffoo.fmt foo.0[3-5][0-9] >>foo.log % autolog -H -Ffoo.fmt foo.06[0-1] >>foo.logThe formatting of format files is described below.
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The format of the output logfile table is specified using the format file. A template, autolog.fmt, is provided to give you a start.
Syntax: # this is a comment... The hash character (#) is used as a comment character ONLY if used as the first character in a line of the file (autolog uses a relatively crude parser).[Menu]
Syntax: DELIMITER[Menu]DELIMITER specifies the field delimiter character to print between fields in a record. It is either a single printable ASCII character, or one of the following special definitions for non-printing and/or potentially confusing delimiter characters: DELIMITER SPACE or DELIMITER SPC Print a space character between fields DELIMITER TAB Print a TAB character between fields DELIMITER CSV Print a comma (,) between fields. This makes the output a Comma-Separated-Variable (csv) file, suitable for reading with common spreadsheet programs, like Excel or Lotus. A common example is "DELIMITER |", which puts a bar (|) between fields.
Syntax: LOGTIME [LOC|UT] LOGTIME will write a timestamp (hh:mm:ss) in the last record of each log entry, recording when the log entry was made. LOGTIME LOC or LOGTIME The timestamp is to be the local time (e.g., EST) LOC is the default time system. LOGTIME UT The timestamp is to be in UTC time, LOGTIME is optional, and if omitted from the format file, no timestamp will be written.[Menu]
Syntax: KEYWORD keyfmt Heading Where: KEYWORD = FITS header keyword. Must be exact. keyfmt = C-style format spec for the output field (e.g., %6.1f, %-10.10s) Heading = text string (no spaces) for the field header to be printed at the top of the output.Fields will appear in the the output records in the order they are given in the format file, even though the keywords in the FITS headers proper may appear in a different order.
Blank or absent header keywords will result in spaces (if string values) or 0 [zero] in the appropriate numerical format (if a numerical value) appearing in the respective fields as place-holders.
Fields may be turned off by putting a # (comment character) in front of them to make them into a comment. This way when you want to turn it back on, you don't have to mess around trying to remember what the format was before...
The allowed format codes are as follows, only the main C format codes are supported:
code type example description --------------------------------------------------------------------- s string %-25.25s 25 character string, left justified %10.10s 10 character string, right justified i integer %2i 2-digit integer f float %7.1f 7-digit floating number, 1 digit precision (e.g., 2435.1) e exponential %9.2e 6-digit exponential, 2 digits precision (e.g., -1.23e-15 ---------------------------------------------------------------------In all cases, the first number (left of the .) gives the width of the field. This will be taken to be the width of the field for the header string as well. Header strings longer than this size are simply truncated.
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OBJECT %-25.25s Object RA %-10.10s RA DEC %-9.9s Dec EQUINOX %7.1f Equinox EXPTIME %7.1f ExpTime ST %-10.10s LST DATE-OBS %-10.10s Date UT %-10.10s UTC HJD %9.1f HJD OBSERVAT %-12.12s Observatory FILENAME %-15.15s FilenameNote that any number of spaces may appear between the three arguments, but *no spaces* may appear within a given argument. For example:
OBJECT %-25.25S Object Namewill result in the string "Object" appearing as the header over the column with the contents of the OBJECT header card, with "Name" being ignored. The parser is very simple-minded.
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At least CFITISO version 1.40 or later is needed to compile autolog (see COMPILING below).
As of 1998 Nov 19, we strongly recommend that you use version 2.0 or later of CFITSIO, as this will provide support for Year2000-compliant FITS date formats. These formats will be the default for all OSU-built instruments (MOSAIC/TIFKAM, ANDICAM, DANDICAM, OSIRIS, and CCDS) starting 1999 January 1.At runtime, you need either an autolog.fmt file in the current working directory, or a format file specified with the -F flag. See the template .fmt file (autolog.fmt) that came with the source for a heavily annotated example.
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If the specified source file is either not a FITS file, or if it is a corrupted FITS file, autolog will print an error message to stderr, but not print anything else for that file. You can suppress these messages using the "-s" flag.
All autolog error messages print the name of the errant file and diagnostics as to what caused the error. See the CFITSIO manual for details of error codes (available online at HEASARC).
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Old versions of the CFITSIO routines (v2.027 and earlier) are very intolerant of minor FITS header formatting errors in optional keywords. For example, if a character argument in a card omits the closing quote ('), it produces the error message:
Error: status=205: string missing closing quote This keyword string value has no closing quote: INSTRUME= 'CTIO OSIRIS / Failed to find the END keyword in header (ffgphd). Failed to read the required primary array header keywords. ffopen could not interpret primary array header of file: foo.fitsThis problem was fixed in CFITSIO v 2.028 (1999 Jan 27), so the "fix" is to install the latest CFITSIO routines and recompile autolog.
The old bug whereby any FITS error would cause the cfitsio routines to report false errors for all subsequent bona-fide FITS files in a wildcard list has been fixed in recent versions of cfitsio.
There are probably lots and lots more bugs lurking in the works. This tool is pretty rude & crude. Send all bug reports to Rick Pogge (pogge@astronomy.ohio-state.edu).
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Must be compiled with the HEASARC cfitsio libraries, v1.40 or later. We recommend, however, that you load the latest version of the cfitsio libraries (currently 2.036, 2000 Feb 4):
gcc -o autolog autolog.c -I/home/cfitsio -L/home/cfitsio -lcfitsiowhere
/home/cfitsio/ is where the fitsio.h and libcfitsio.a files liveThe gccfits script is provided with the source code as an example.
On Solaris systems, you also have to include the socket and nsl libraries explicitly, thus
gcc -o autolog autolog.c -I/home/cfitsio -L/home/cfitsio -lcfitsio -lsocket -lnslFITSIO is freely available and well supported and documented, has has emerged as the benchmark FITS generation/reading package. It is senseless to use anything else to create or read FITS format data files. See the FITSIO website
http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/fitsio/.for the latest version of cfitsio and the associated documentation.
The most recent version of CFITSIO that we have used with this code is v2.036 (2000 Feb 4).
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The source code for autolog is available as a gzip-compressed tar archive. The latest version is 1.2 (2000 Feb 20):
00README
file provided with the ftp distribution for
details.[Menu]
Richard PoggeLast Update: 2000 Feb 20
The Ohio State University Department of Astronomy
pogge@astronomy.ohio-state.edu
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