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- Reading and writing Table objects

# Reading and writing Table objects

Astropy provides a unified interface for reading and writing data in different formats. For many common cases this will simplify the process of file I/O and reduce the need to master the separate details of all the I/O packages within Astropy. For details and examples of using this interface see the Unified file read/write interface section.

## Getting started

The `Table` class includes two methods, `read()` and `write()`, that make it possible to read from and write to files. A number of formats are automatically supported (see Built-in table readers/writers) and new file formats and extensions can be registered with the `Table` class (see I/O Registry (astropy.io.registry)).

To use this interface, first import the `Table` class, then simply call the `Table` `read()` method with the name of the file and the file format, for instance `'ascii.daophot'`:

    >>> from astropy.table import Table
    >>> t = Table.read('photometry.dat', format='ascii.daophot')

For certain file formats, the format can be automatically detected, for example from the filename extension:

    >>> t = Table.read('table.tex')

Similarly, for writing, the format can be explicitly specified:

    >>> t.write(filename, format='latex')

As for the `read()` method, the format may be automatically identified in some cases.

Any additional arguments specified will depend on the format. For examples of this see the section Built-in table readers/writers. This section also provides the full list of choices for the `format` argument.

## Supported formats

The Unified file read/write interface has built-in support for the following data file formats:

- ASCII formats
- HDF5
- FITS
- VO Tables