fitsort(1)						      General Commands Manual							fitsort(1)

NAME

       fitsort - sort FITS header information from a list of files

SYNOPSIS

       dfits <FITS files...> | fitsort <FITS keywords...>

DESCRIPTION

       fitsort	extract keyword values from a set of FITS headers and outputs it in an ASCII table format, which is compatible with most data pro-
       cessing software packages. It shall only be used in combination with the dfits utility.

       The ASCII output is shown in columns. Columns are aligned with blank characters and also separated by tabulations. Blank  alignment  allows
       human readers to visualize the output in a pretty format, tabulations are there for spreadsheet compatibility. If you want to load out fit-
       sort output into any spreadsheet, specify that fields shall be separated by tabulations and entries separated by linefeeds.

       Examples :
       dfits *.fits | fitsort BITPIX NAXIS NAXIS1 NAXIS2

       The output would look like:
       FILE	      BITPIX   NAXIS	NAXIS1	 NAXIS2
       file0001.fits  16       2	128	 128
       file0002.fits  32       2	512	 512
       ...

       ESO specific features in the FITS header are also supported. To get values for 'HIERARCH ESO' keywords, just give the complete names within
       double quotes. e.g.

       dfits *.fits | fitsort "HIERARCH ESO INS LENS"

       Another way of giving HIERARCH ESO keywords is to use the short FITS notation, the above example can be given as:

       dfits *.fits | fitsort INS.LENS

       Example: to retrieve the DPR keywords from an ESO FITS header, you would use:

       dfits *.fits | fitsort To be completed...  DPR.CATG DPR.TYPE DPR.TECH

       This  second way of requesting HIERARCH ESO keywords is not only shorter to type, it also avoids typing quotes or double-quotes on the com-
       mand-line, making it easier to script with fitsort.

       Notice that the keywords you give on the command-line are case-insensitive.  The above line is equivalent to:

       dfits *.fits | fitsort dpr.catg dpr.type dpr.tech

OPTIONS

       -d     Do not print out the first output line. This option is useful to get only the query results, without the top line (giving all column
	      names). This makes it easy to script fitsort from programs like awk or perl.

FILES

       Input files to dfits shall all comply with FITS format.	fitsort also supports HIERARCH ESO FITS format.

SEE ALSO

       dfits (1)

								    25 Jun 2001 							fitsort(1)