NAME

       stilts-tcopy - Converts between table formats

SYNOPSIS

       stilts tcopy [in=<table>] [out=<out-table>] [ifmt=<in-format>] [ofmt=<out-format>]

DESCRIPTION

       tcopy  is  a  table  copying  tool. It simply copies a table from one place to another, but since you can
       specify the input and output formats as desired, it works as a converter from any of the supported  input
       formats to any of the supported output formats.

       tcopy  is  just a stripped-down version of tpipe - it doesn't do anything that tpipe can't, but the usage
       is slightly simplified. It is provided as a drop-in replacement for the old tablecopy (uk.ac.starlink.ta‐
       ble.TableCopy) tool which was supplied with earlier versions of STIL and TOPCAT - it has the  same  argu‐
       ments  and behaviour as tablecopy, but is implemented somewhat differently and will in some cases be more
       efficient.

OPTIONS

       in=<table>
              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 ex‐
                  plicitly using the ifmt parameter. Note that not all formats can be streamed in this way.

                * 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.

       out=<out-table>
              The location of the output table. This is usually a filename to write to. If it is  equal  to  the
              special value "-" (the default) the output table will be written to standard output.

       ifmt=<in-format>
              Specifies the format of the input table as specified by parameter in. The known formats are listed
              in  SUN/256. This flag can be used if you know what format your table is in. If it has the special
              value (auto) (the default), then an attempt will be made to detect the format of the  table  auto‐
              matically.  This cannot always be done correctly however, in which case the program will exit with
              an error explaining which formats were attempted.

       ofmt=<out-format>
              Specifies the format in which the output table will be written (one  of  the  ones  in  SUN/256  -
              matching  is  case-insensitive  and you can use just the first few letters). If it has the special
              value "(auto)" (the default), then the output filename will be examined to try to guess what  sort
              of  file  is  required  usually by looking at the extension. If it's not obvious from the filename
              what output format is intended, an error will result.

SEE ALSO

       stilts(1)

       If the package stilts-doc is installed, the full documentation SUN/256 is available in HTML format:
       file:///usr/share/doc/stilts-doc/sun256/index.html

VERSION

       STILTS version 3.1-2-debian

       This is the Debian version of Stilts, which lack the support of some file formats and network  protocols.
       For differences see
       file:///usr/share/doc/stilts/README.Debian

AUTHOR

       Mark Taylor (Bristol University)

                                                    Mar 2017                                     STILTS-TCOPY(1)