STILTS-TJOIN(1)

📦
version 3.5.4 · 5 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💖 STILTS-TJOIN(1) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the stilts-tjoin page — it lives over in the Stilts commands section of the manual and it is here to solve a very specific little problem for you. sit down, hydrate, let's go 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

stilts-tjoin — joins multiple tables side-to-side 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

stilts tjoin [nin=<count>] [ifmtN=<in-format>] [inN=<tableN>]
             [icmdN=<cmds>] [ocmd=<cmds>]
             [omode=out|meta|stats|count|checksum|cgi|discard|topcat|samp|tosql|gui]
             [out=<out-table>] [ofmt=<out-format>]
             [fixcols=none|dups|all] [suffixN=<label>]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

tjoin does a trivial side-by-side join of multiple tables. like, the most unbothered join imaginable. the N'th row of the output table is just: the N'th row of the first input table, then the N'th row of the second input table, then the N'th row of the third, ... and so on down the line. no matching, no cleverness, just vibes and row order ✨

it's giving perfect for when you want to amalgamate two or more tables whose row orderings correspond exactly to each other. key word: exactly. bestie, if they line up, they line up 🎀

but for the (way more usual) case where the rows of the tables you're joining are not already in the right order? yeah no, don't use this one. use one of the crossmatching commands instead. tjoin is not gonna guess for you and honestly she shouldn't have to 💀

👑 OPTIONS 👑

  • nin=<count> — the number of input tables for this task. for each of the input tables N there will be associated parameters ifmtN, inN and icmdN. (yes, the N's are literal, that's the pattern, iykyk 🌈)
  • ifmtN=<in-format> — specifies the format of input table #N as specified by parameter inN. the known formats are listed in SUN/256. use this flag when you already know what format your table is in, no guessing games. if it has the special value (auto) (the default), then an attempt will be made to detect the format of the table automatically. this cannot always be done correctly though — in which case the program will exit with an error explaining which formats were attempted. also, this parameter is ignored for scheme-specified tables 👀
  • inN=<tableN> — the location of input table #N. bestie, this can 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 explicitly using the ifmtN parameter. note that not all formats can be streamed in this way.
    • a scheme specification of the form :<scheme-name>:<scheme-args> ✨
    • 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. no unzipping first, she handles it 💅

  • icmdN=<cmds> — specifies processing to be performed on input table #N as specified by parameter inN, before any other processing has taken place. the value of this parameter is one or more of the filter commands described in SUN/256. if more than one is given, they must be separated by semicolon characters (;). this parameter can be repeated multiple times on the same command line to build up a list of processing steps. the sequence of commands given in this way defines the processing pipeline which is performed on the table 🛠️

commands may alternatively be supplied in an external file, by using the indirection character @. thus a value of "@filename" causes the file filename to be read for a list of filter commands to execute. the commands in the file may be separated by newline characters and/or semicolons, and lines which are blank or which start with a # character are ignored. a backslash character '\fR' at the end of a line joins it with the following line 🌙

  • ocmd=<cmds> — specifies processing to be performed on the output table, after all other processing has taken place. the value of this parameter is one or more of the filter commands described in SUN/256. if more than one is given, they must be separated by semicolon characters (;). this parameter can be repeated multiple times on the same command line to build up a list of processing steps. the sequence of commands given in this way defines the processing pipeline which is performed on the table 🛠️

commands may alternatively be supplied in an external file, by using the indirection character @. thus a value of "@filename" causes the file filename to be read for a list of filter commands to execute. the commands in the file may be separated by newline characters and/or semicolons, and lines which are blank or which start with a # character are ignored. a backslash character '\fR' at the end of a line joins it with the following line 🌙

  • omode=out|meta|stats|count|checksum|cgi|discard|topcat|samp|tosql|gui — the mode in which the result table will be output. the default mode is out, which means the result will be written as a new table to disk or elsewhere, as determined by the out and ofmt parameters. but there are other possibilities! these correspond to uses to which a table can be put other than outputting it — like displaying metadata, calculating statistics, or populating a table in an SQL database 💾 for some values of this parameter, additional parameters (<mode-args>) are required to determine the exact behaviour.

possible values are:

  • out
  • meta
  • stats
  • count
  • checksum
  • cgi
  • discard
  • topcat
  • samp
  • tosql
  • gui

use the help=omode flag or see SUN/256 for more information 👑

  • 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. ✨
this parameter must only be given if omode has its default value of "out". don't be sneaky 😤
  • 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. no cap.
this parameter must only be given if omode has its default value of "out". same rule, bestie 🚫
  • fixcols=none|dups|all — determines how input columns are renamed before use in the output table. the choices are:
    • none: columns are not renamed 🙅
    • dups: columns which would otherwise have duplicate names in the output will be renamed to indicate which table they came from 👯
    • all: all columns will be renamed to indicate which table they came from 🌈

if columns are renamed, the new ones are determined by suffix* parameters 🎀

  • suffixN=<label> — if the fixcols parameter is set so that input columns are renamed for insertion into the output table, this parameter determines how the renaming is done. it gives a suffix which is appended to all renamed columns from table N ✨

🧚 SEE ALSO 🧚

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

💜 VERSION 💜

STILTS version 3.5.4-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) 👑

and that's the whole page bestie!! this one's from Mar 2017, it's the STILTS-TJOIN(1) page out of the Stilts commands manual, and it's shipping STILTS version 3.5.4-debian — the Debian build, with the usual little Debian-flavoured caveats noted above 🫶 slay, go join your tables side-by-side, and remember: they have to line up already. periodt 💅✨

📦 where this page comes from