Detailed Template Line Format

The format of each ASCII template line closely follows the format of a FITS keyword record:

  KEYWORD = KEYVALUE / COMMENT

except that free format may be used (e.g., the equals sign may appear at any position in the line) and TAB characters are allowed and are treated the same as space characters. The KEYVALUE and COMMENT fields are optional. The equals sign character is also optional, but it is recommended that it be included for clarity. Any template line that begins with the pound '#' character is ignored by the template parser and may be use to insert comments into the template file itself.

The KEYWORD name field is limited to 8 characters in length and only the letters A-Z, digits 0-9, and the hyphen and underscore characters may be used, without any embedded spaces. Lowercase letters in the template keyword name will be converted to uppercase. Leading spaces in the template line preceding the keyword name are generally ignored, except if the first 8 characters of a template line are all blank, then the entire line is treated as a FITS comment keyword (with a blank keyword name) and is copied verbatim into the FITS header.

The KEYVALUE field may have any allowed FITS data type: character string, logical, integer, real, complex integer, or complex real. The character string values need not be enclosed in single quote characters unless they are necessary to distinguish the string from a different data type (e.g. 2.0 is a real but '2.0' is a string). The keyword has an undefined (null) value if the template record only contains blanks following the "=" or between the "=" and the "/" comment field delimiter.

String keyword values longer than 68 characters (the maximum length that will fit in a single FITS keyword record) are permitted using the CFITSIO long string convention. They can either be specified as a single long line in the template, or by using multiple lines where the continuing lines contain the 'CONTINUE' keyword, as in this example:

  LONGKEY = 'This is a long string value that is contin&'
  CONTINUE  'ued over 2 records' / comment field goes here

The format of template lines with CONTINUE keyword is very strict: 3 spaces must follow CONTINUE and the rest of the line is copied verbatim to the FITS file.

The start of the optional COMMENT field must be preceded by "/", which is used to separate it from the keyword value field. Exceptions are if the KEYWORD name field contains COMMENT, HISTORY, CONTINUE, or if the first 8 characters of the template line are blanks.

More than one Header-Data Unit (HDU) may be defined in the template file. The start of an HDU definition is denoted with a SIMPLE or XTENSION template line:

1) SIMPLE begins a Primary HDU definition. SIMPLE may only appear as the first keyword in the template file. If the template file begins with XTENSION instead of SIMPLE, then a default empty Primary HDU is created, and the template is then assumed to define the keywords starting with the first extension following the Primary HDU.

2) XTENSION marks the beginning of a new extension HDU definition. The previous HDU will be closed at this point and processing of the next extension begins.