[fitsbits] Fastest way to read a binary table

[Clive Page]

In article <mailman.1026146161.6715.fitsbits at listmgr.cv.nrao.edu>,
William Pence  <pence at tetra.gsfc.nasa.gov> wrote:

>The number of rows to read in each iteration, M, can be determined
>by calling the 'fits_get_rowsize' routine in CFITSIO.  The value of M is not
>very critical; as a rough rule of thumb you could try using M = 60000 /
>NAXIS1 where 'NAXIS1' is the width of one row of your table in bytes. 

Erm, 60000 seems quite a small buffer size nowadays, given that it's hard
to find a computer around here with less than 256 megabytes.  So a couple
of questions, if I may:

How did you choose that value?

Is it possible to recompile CFITSIO with a bigger buffer

Would that make it more efficient at handling large binary tables?


-- 
Clive Page   cgp at le.ac.uk