CURSA extensions

Some additional items can be added to the TST header information which provide additional information about the catalogue and allow CURSA[3] to interpret it more precisely. These items begin with a `#' character and thus are TST comments. Consequently a catalogue which contains them remains perfectly standard and valid and can be processed with software other than CURSA. The items are illustrated in Tables  and  and are as follows.

#column-units:

is followed by a tab-separated list of units for the columns.

#column-types:

is followed by a tab-separated list of data types for the columns. The permitted data types are listed in Table .

#column-formats:

is followed by a tab-separated list of display formats for the columns. Fortran-like, FITS-compatible formats are used. This convention facilitates converting tables between the TST and FITS tables formats without loss of information.

Table: CURSA data types

CURSA Data Type	Description	Standard
		Fortran 77?
BYTE	Signed byte	No
WORD	Signed word	No
INTEGER	Signed integer	Yes
REAL	Single precision	Yes
DOUBLE	Double precision	Yes
LOGICAL	Logical	Yes
CHAR[$*n$]	Character string	Yes

$n$ is the number of elements in the character string; it is a positive integer.

In all cases the items are listed in the order in which they occur in the table. There is no tab character between #column-units:, #column-types: and #column-formats: and the following value. Values in the special TST columns of Right Ascension and Declination (that is, those identified by the ra_col and dec_col parameters) are always interpretted using the TST rules for representing angles rather than the CURSA ones.