STILTS-TJOIN(1)

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 performs a trivial side-by-side join of multiple tables. The N'th row of the output table consists of the N'th row of the first input table, followed by the N'th row of the second input table, ... and so on. It is suitable if you want to amalgamate two or more tables whose row orderings correspond exactly to each other.

For the (more usual) case in which the rows of the tables to be joined are not already in the right order, use one of the crossmatching commands.

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.

ifmtN=<in-format>
    Specifies the format of input table #N as specified by parameter inN. The known formats are listed in SUN/256. This flag can be used if you know what format your table is in. 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 however, in which case the program will exit with an error explaining which formats were attempted. This parameter is ignored for scheme-specified tables.

inN=<tableN>
    The location of input table #N. This may 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.

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 that the result will be written as a new table to disk or elsewhere, as determined by the out and ofmt parameters. However, there are other possibilities, which correspond to uses to which a table can be put other than outputting it, such as 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".

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.

    This parameter must only be given if omode has its default value of "out".

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
stilts(1)

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)