GNU Astronomy Utilities manual

4.2.1 Configuration file format

The configuration files for each program have the standard program executable name with a .conf suffix. When you download the source code, you can find them in the same directory as the source code of each program, see Program source.

Any line in the configuration file whose first non-white character is a # is considered to be a comment and is ignored. The same goes for an empty line. The name of the parameter is the same as the long format of the command line option for that parameter. The parameter name and parameter value have to be separated by any number of ‘white-space’ characters: space, tab or vertical tab. By default several space characters are used. If the value of an option has space characters (most commonly for the hdu option), then double quotes can be used to specify the full value.

Any text after the first two words (separated by the above delimiters) in a line is ignored. If it is an option without a value in the --help output (on/off option), then the value should be 1 if it is to be ‘on’ and 0 otherwise. If an option is not recognized in the configuration file, the name of the file and unrecognized option will be reported and the program will abort. If a parameter is repeated more more than once in the configuration files and it is not set on the command line, then only the first value will be used, the rest will be ignored.

You can build or edit any of the directories and the configuration files your self using any text editor. However, it is recommended to use the --setdirconf and --setusrconf options to set default values for the current directory or this user, see Operating modes. With these options, the values you give will be checked as explained in Options before writing in the current directory’s configuration file. They will also print a set of commented lines guiding the reader and will also classify the options based on their context and write them in their logical order to be more understandable.

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GNU Astronomy Utilities manual, November 2015.