[fitsbits] Abuse of EXTEND keyword
William Thompson wrote:
William Pence wrote:
This mention of the NEXTEND keyword caused me to rethink what is really
meant by EXTEND = F: EXTEND = T is defined to mean that the FITS file
*is permitted* to have extensions following the primary array (the
actually wording in the Standard is "may contain extensions" ); it does
not mean that the file actually has any extensions.
If EXTEND = F, then this logically means the opposite, i.e., that the
FITS file is *not permitted* to have any extensions. But this is not
the meaning that the STEREO mission folks really intended by setting
EXTEND = F since they surely don't care if users were to add extensions
to the files at a later date.
We don't expect users to add extensions on their own.
this is going on the order of "I hate to say this, but":
I've come to expect that users don't really care what we expect.
Aloha,
Maren
|