[fitsbits] substring array convention

[William Pence]

One of the changes that was made in the new 3.0 version of the FITS 
Standard document was to delete Appendix B, which described 2 
conventions for storing arrays of strings in a FITS binary table.  The 
rational for deleting this appendix was that it would more appropriate 
to document these conventions in the Registry of FITS Conventions, which 
I intend to do soon.

One question, however, is whether both of these conventions have 
actually been used.  I know that the simpler convention, e.g.,

TFORMn = '120A20'

has been used (in this case, it means that the 120 character string 
consists of 6 substrings that are each 20 characters long).

The other, more complex convention has 2 variations.  The first form, 
which is equivalent to the above example, is

TFORMn = '120A:SSTR20'

The other variation is

TFORMn = '120A:SSTR20/032'

which signifies that the 120 character field consists of variable-length 
substrings where each substring has a maximum length of 20 characters 
and is terminated by the ASCII character 32 (which happens to be a space 
character).

Does anyone know whether this more complex convention has been used in 
any real FITS files?  If so, I'd like to get an example file.

Bill
-- 
____________________________________________________________________
Dr. William Pence                       William.Pence at nasa.gov
NASA/GSFC Code 662       HEASARC        +1-301-286-4599 (voice)
Greenbelt MD 20771                      +1-301-286-1684 (fax)