funindex(1)

💖 funindex — the manual, but make it cute ✨

okay so bestie, you're holding the man page for funindex, part of the SAORD Documentation fam, and honestly? it's giving "tiny script, big main character energy" 🌟 she creates an index for a column of a FITS binary table. that's it. that's the job. periodt 💅

🦋 NAME 🦋

funindex — create an index for a column of a FITS binary table

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

funindex <switches>  <iname> <key> [oname]

✨ OPTIONS ✨

🚨 NB: these options are not compatible with Funtools processing. Please use the defaults instead. (yes, for real. the defaults are the vibe. don't fight it 🙈)

• -c — compress output using gzip
• -a — ASCII output, ignore -c (default: FITS table)
• -f — FITS table output (default: FITS table)
• -l — long output, i.e. with key value(s) (default: long)
• -s — short output, i.e. no key value(s) (default: long)

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

okay so here's the tea ☕ the funindex script creates an index for the specified column (the key) by running funtable -s (sort) and then saving the column value and the record number for each sorted row. and then — and this is the iconic part — that index gets used automatically by funtools filtering of that column, provided the index file's modification date is later than that of the data file. slay 🔥

the first required argument is the name of the FITS binary table to index. heads up though: text files cannot be indexed at this time 😭 that's just the rules bestie.

the second required argument is the column (key) name to index. now, while multiple keys can be specified in principle, the funtools index processing assumes a single key and will not recognize files containing multiple keys. so... one key. that's the whole assignment 🎀

by default, the output index file name is [root]_[key].idx, where [root] is the root of the input file. Funtools looks for this specific file name when deciding whether to use an index for faster filtering. therefore, the optional third argument (output file name) should not be used for funtools processing. like, you can, but why would you do that to yourself 💀

for example, to create an index on column Y for a given FITS file, use:

funindex foo.fits Y

this will generate an index named foo_y.idx, which will be used by funtools for filters involving the Y column. chef's kiss 👑✨

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

See funtools(7) for a list of Funtools help pages 🫶

and that's the whole page, bestie — you ate that 💖 this was version 1.4.5, dated April 14, 2011, so like... vintage queen behavior fr fr 👑 go index something. mwah 🎀