SBN-Developed Software Tools

This page lists tools and suites of utilities developed here at the SBN for internal use and for our users. The links below connect to compressed tar files of source code with documentation, usually in the form of man pages for Unix systems, kept at the main Small Bodies Node at the University of Maryland. These files are updated periodically, as routines change significantly.

We also make available links to other non-SBN utilities which may be useful when accessing and manipulating data files.

Note:

This software is offered as is without guarantees of suitability for use or fool-proofedness. Please practice safe processing!

Programs may require slight modification to run under your own environment. In Perl routines, for example, you will likely have to change the location of the Perl interpreter invoked in the first line of the source file. In IDL, make sure your paths are set correctly so that the main program can find sub-routines.

 

ReadPDS

ReadPDS is a set of IDL procedures for reading the PDS labels common to small bodies data sets. The latest release is version 4.2. This package is intended primarily for end-users of PDS data.

Note that as of Version 4.2, ReadPDS requires IDL version 6.0 or later. The previous version of the read procedures will remain available with minimal support for a while.

An examples directory is included with the distribution. It can be downloaded separately or as part of the complete package.

• ReadPDS Version 4.2 Package for IDL 6.x:

  • ReadPDS 4.2, with examples: zip (19M packed, 32M unpacked), tarball (24M packed, 32M unpacked)
  • ReadPDS 4.2, without examples: zip (72K packed, 259K unpacked), tarball (76K packed, 259K unpacked)
  • Examples only zip (19M packed, 32M unpacked), tarball (24M packed, 32M unpacked)
  • A brief description of this package is available here. (Last update: Wednesday, 15-Feb-2006 11:24:43 EST)

• ReadPDS Version 4.0 Package for IDL 5.x:

  • ReadPDS 4.0 with examples: zip (39M packed, 81M unpacked), tarball (50M packed, 82M unpacked)
  • ReadPDS 4.0 without examples: zip (73K packed, 380K unpacked), tarball (111K packed, 380K unpacked)
  • Examples only zip (39M packed, 82M unpacked), tarball (52M packed, 82M unpacked)
  • A brief description of this package is available here. (Last update: 12 May, 2008)

File and Label Formatting/Verifying Routines

These routines are divided into three suites. A brief one-line description of all the routines, by suite, is here.

sbnpds.tar.Z (Tuesday, 06-May-2008 13:41:51 EDT)
sbnpds.zip (Tuesday, 06-May-2008 13:41:52 EDT)

Utilities for verifying and working with PDS labels and data sets, incuding: table verifiers for both ASCII and binary TABLE objects; a routine to generate an index listing from PDS label keywords; a utility to insert INVALID/MISSING values into blank fields; etc. Useful mainly for data preparers.

The SBN Table Verifier is also available separately:

• pdstv.tar.Z (Tuesday, 06-May-2008 13:41:53 EDT)
• pdstv.zip (Tuesday, 06-May-2008 13:41:53 EDT)

sbnfits.tar.Z (Friday, 18-Apr-2008 11:51:16 EDT)
sbnfits.zip (Friday, 18-Apr-2008 11:51:17 EDT)

Utilities for working with FITS files and labels, including routines to: concatenate files (C source); insert and remove Unix record delimiters into and from stream (FITS) files; and generate an index file from FITS header keywords. Intended mainly for data preparers, some of these routines also come in handy for end users who do not usually work with FITS files.

sbnfiles.tar.Z (Friday, 18-Apr-2008 11:50:54 EDT)
sbnfiles.zip (Friday, 18-Apr-2008 11:50:54 EDT)

Utilities for doing some tedious, repetitive file tasks, like: generating sample listings with byte labels; adding and removing carriage-return characters; adding and deleting bytes in each record; forcing file names to upper or lower case; and so on. Most of these are useful only to data preparers, but some end-users may find a few of the routines (like the record delimiter modifiers) handy if they must deal with data formatted for systems unlike their own.

PDS File Utilities		Source	Description
ReadPDS	IDL (version 5.x and 6.x) routines for reading PDS-labelled data	Zipped and Compressed TAR files	HTML
addcolhdr	Add a numeric column header to a PDS ASCII TABLE file, given a separate PDS label and data file	Perl	man
addcolnum	Add COLUMN_NUMBER keywords to a PDS TABLE object label PDS label and data file	Perl	man
pdsidx	Extract keyword values from PDS labels to create an index table	Perl	man
ppodl	ODL pretty-printer (ODL is the language in which PDS labels and catalog files are written)	Perl	man
tbldelimit	Add spreadsheet-style field delimiters to a PDS ASCII table file with a detached label	Perl	man
tblundel	Remove spreadsheet-style field delimiters from a PDS ASCII table file with a detached label	Perl	man
FITS File Utilities		Source	Description
splitfits	Split a FITS file into separate files for each header and data section	C	man
brkstrm	Break a stream ASCII file (without carriage control) into fixed length records, adding carriage control	C	man
mkstrm	Turn an ASCII file into a stream file by removing carriage control	C	man
concat	Concatenate two files into one without padding or adding record delimiters	C	man
fitsidx	Extract keyword values from FITS headers to create an index table	Perl	man
General File Utilities		Source	Description
addcr	Add CR characters before LF characters in an ASCII file	C	man
rmcr	Remove CR characters from an ASCII file	C	man
addlf	Add LF characters after CR characters in an ASCII file	C	man
rmlf	Remove LF characters from an ASCII file	C	man
splitfile	Split a file vertically (i.e., split each record)	C	man
joinfile	Rejoin vertical parts of a file split by splitfile	C	man
lcfn	Force file names to all lowercase	C	man
ucfn	Force file names to all uppercase	C	man
null2blank	Convert hex null characters to ASCII blank characters	C	man
rmVMS	Remove VMS version numbers from Unix file names	C	man
sample	Generate a sample listing of an ASCII file	C	man
linnum	Add line number tags to the beginning of ASCII file records	Perl	man
fixlen	Pad ASCII records with blanks to produce a fixed-length record file	C	man
varlen	Trim trailing blanks from ASCII records to produce a variable record length file	C	man

Non-SBN Utilities

Here are other software packages that may be of use when trying to access and manipulate data files (images, spectra and tables). Some of the software packages require PDS labels (attached or detached) and some require a FITS file with an attached FITS header. A detached PDS label will not cause a problem as long as a FITS header exists as part of the data file. Likewise, an attached FITS header will not cause a problem as long as there is an associated detached PDS label.

• PDS NASAView: NASAView was written to allow the user to display and examine typical PDS archive products containing an image or a table, .fit and .img files are examples. Each archive file must have an attached or a detached PDS label. The program is not intended to be used for intensive scientific analysis of the data.
• SAOImage ds9: ds9 allows the user to manipulate FITS data. It requires an attached FITS header and will not work with files having only a PDS label.
• fv: fv is an easy to use graphical program for viewing and editing any FITS format image or table. Fv is capable of reading multiple FITS extensions. Fv requires an attached FITS header and will not work with files having only a PDS label. The Fv software is small, completely self-contained and ready to run on many platforms.

 

Problems or Questions?

For technical or form-related questions, please contact Anne Raugh (raughastro.umd.edu). For scientific or data-related questions, contact Ludmilla Kolokolova (ludmillaastro.umd.edu).

Last page update: Monday, 12-May-2008 11:20:35 EDT , Puru Shetty