[AstroPy] Re: HIERARCH

[Jin-chung Hsu]

Andrew Ptak wrote:

>>Maybe the way to do this is to have a "strict" flag as a property of
>>the header (separate from actual header entries like SIMPLE=T), and to
>>clear it if there is a non-standard extension or a recoverable error
>>in the file when read.  
>>    
>>
>
>It would also make sense to add a "strict" keyword to header functions,
>to turn toggle FITS conformance testing (or exceptions).  I haven't had
>a chance to use pyfits yet (mainly due to poor performance of numarray
>with small arrays... is this still a problem, by the way?), but this
>makes me wonder if there already are fits conformance exceptions.
>
>Andy
>
We have implemented a flexible verification scheme to conform to FITS 
standards in the more recent
versions (0.9 and later).  The principle is "forgiving" in input, strict 
enforcing standards by default (but can be reset to "ignore" or "fix" 
the non-standards) in output.

HIERARCH is kind of in the middle.  It is NOT a FITS standard.

JC