Tool: sort_packets
Description
This tool sorts a stream of CCSDS packets. The stream is
assumed to only contain one APID, if not, unpredictable reasults will
occur. Packets are sorted in their "natural order" - i.e. in the manner
appropriate to their type as determined by a SwiftTypedPacketReader.
- LDP packets are sorted by page number.
- All other Swift packets are sorted by secondary header time and sequence
number.
- Generic CCSDS packets are sorted by sequence counter, though this is
of limited usefulness since that counter is cyclical.
The sort is stable, meaning that the original order is preserved when
two packets are "the same".
This tool can optionally "unique" the packet stream -i.e. delete
all but the last of a string of identical packets. Note that this is
different from common "uniquing" practice, because we consider the last
packet in the input stream to be more valid. This way an earlier version
of a packet will be replaced by a later revised version.
Option Summary
| Option | Argument Type | Default Value |
|---|
| -apid_list |
String |
apids.list |
| -infile |
String |
- |
| -outfile |
String |
- |
| -trash |
String |
|
| -unique |
Boolean |
true |
Only the initial unique characters of each option are
significant. Each option must be followed by an argument
of the given type. Boolean "true" and "false" are indicated
with "y" and "n" respectively. A boolean option without a
value is assumed to be "true".
For filename arguments, "-" means either stdin or stdout
as appropriate.
Each option is described in detail below.
Parameters
- apid_list String (default = apids.list)
- The name of a configuration file for the SwiftTypedPacketReader
which lists the packet types for various APIDs.
- infile String (default = -)
- The input file name.
- outfile String (default = -)
- The output file name. The output file should not be the
same as the input file.
- trash String (default = )
- The name of a file to which packets deleted by uniquing will be
appended. If this is an empty string, deleted packets will be discarded.
This parameter is ignored if the "unique" parameter is false.
- unique Boolean (default = true)
- Should the packets be "uniqued" after sorting?.