$Id$

NeSDaC

filename-list

NAME

filename-list - list

SYNOPSIS

Several StageII programs can accept a namelist-parameter. A namelist-parameter is a list of strings, delimited by one or more ',' (commas) or white-space (as defined by the isspace function, unix:ctype (man(3C))), characters.

Each of these strings must be either the name of a FITS file (that can be used by the program), or the name of a file containing another namelist-parameter.

The current implementation is not at all flawless, we are bound to run into trouble sometime. Any file that

does not begin with the string : "SIMPLE = ", ie. is NOT a FITS file
and is shorter than 8 Kbyte

is assumed to be a valid namelist-parameter file. If this assumption is wrong, unpredictable things will happen. The file is openend, the content interpreted as a list of filenames and the program eventually will try to access these files. If one is lucky, this will fail on errors in the category "cannot open" immediately, occasionally a valid filename is used and errors occur further along the line of processing. (see the source file .../src/evt/evt_open.c:idrctnlist).

This potentially dangerous implementation must be resolved soon, maybe by defining a special FITS file type, ie. a namelist-parameter FITS file.

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