TOPCAT(1)

📦 version 4.10.5, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

👑 TOPCAT(1) — the manual page, but make it cute

okay bestie, welcome to the TOPCAT(1) page — that's the User Commands section of the manual, in case you were wondering where we are 💅

🌸 NAME 🌸

topcat — Tool for OPerations on Catalogues And Tables

(yes the capitals spell TOPCAT, the devs ate with that one, no cap)

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

topcat <flags> [[-f <format>] <table> ...]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

TOPCAT is an interactive graphical viewer and editor for tabular data. It's literally built to give astronomers basically every facility they need for analysis and manipulation of source catalogues and other tables — though ngl it works for non-astronomical data too, it's not picky 🫶

It understands a bunch of astronomically important formats (including FITS and VOTable), and more formats can be added. iconic behaviour honestly.

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

  • -f <format> — sets the file format. Auto-detected formats are: fits-plus, colfits-plus, colfits-basic, fits, votable

And the full list of all known formats: fits-plus, colfits-plus, colfits-basic, fits, votable, ascii, csv, tst, ipac, wdc

  • -verbose — turn the verbosity of the reports to the console wayyy up
  • -debug — sprinkle debugging information into the console log messages
  • -demo — start with demo data, instant gratification bestie
  • -running — reuse an existing TOPCAT instance if one is already running
  • -memory — use memory storage for tables
  • -disk — use disk backing store for large tables (for when your tables are giving big)
  • -samp — use SAMP for tool interoperability
  • -[no]hub — [don't] run the internal SAMP hub
  • -exthub — run an external SAMP hub
  • -noserv — don't run any services (SAMP)
  • -help — print the help message and exit
  • -version — print component versions etc. and exit
  • -stilts <args> — run STILTS, not TOPCAT
  • -jsamp <args> — run JSAMP, not TOPCAT

💜 Useful Java flags

  • -classpath jar1:jar2.. — specify additional classes
  • -XmxnnnM — use nnn megabytes of memory
  • -Dname=value — set a system property

🌈 Properties 🌈

Useful system properties (-Dname=value — and heads up, lists are colon-separated):

  • java.io.tmpdir — temporary filespace directory
  • jdbc.drivers — JDBC driver classes
  • jel.classes — custom algebraic function classes
  • jel.classes.activation — custom action function classes
  • star.connectors — custom remote filestore classes
  • startable.load.dialogs — custom load dialogue classes
  • startable.readers — custom table input handlers
  • startable.writers — custom table output handlers
  • startable.storage — storage policy
  • mark.workaround — work around the mark/reset bug (peep topcat -jsamp -help for more)

⭐ VERSION ⭐

This is the Debian version of topcat. See /usr/share/doc/topcat/README.Debian for the differences, iykyk.

💖 AUTHOR 💖

Mark Taylor (Bristol University) — king behaviour

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

WWW: http://www.starlink.ac.uk/topcat/

that's the whole page bestie, you're so smart for reading it all, go forth and catalogue 🌟

and that's a wrap — this was topcat from March 2017, page TOPCAT(1), mwah 💋

📦 where this page comes from