[AstroPy] PyFITS: Appending tables with variable length array...?

[Taro Sato]

Hi there.  I'm trying to do something simple with PyFITS, appending
tables but running into a problem.

The manual provides a general procedure for tables with no varlen
arrays, which I mostly follow in the code snippet below.

import pyfits as pf

...

t1 = pf.open(fits1)
t2 = pf.open(fits2)

nr1 = t1[1].data.shape[0]
nr2 = t2[1].data.shape[0]
nr = nr1 + nr2
hdu = pf.new_table(t1[1].columns, nrows=nr)
for i in range(len(t1[1].columns)):
    if i == 4:
        # this is a variable length array column; need to
        # work on row by row
        for j, x in enumerate(t2[1].data.field(i)):
            print((nr, nr1+j))
            hdu.data.field(i)[nr1+j] = x
            continue
    # for non variable length column, this is fine
    hdu.data.field(i)[nr1:] = t2[1].data.field(i)


The conditional was added to take care of a variable length array
column (#5).  But this doesn't work...

So my question is, how do we do this?  Is it at all possible to update
values in a varlen array column?  Is my only option to create a new
table from scratch?

Thank you for your time,
Taro