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Exceptions

Note

This is a list of many of the fatal exceptions emitted by vo.table when the file does not conform to spec. Other exceptions may be raised due to unforeseen cases or bugs in vo.table itself.

E01: Invalid size specifier ‘x’ for a char/unicode field (in field ‘y’)

The size specifier for a char or unicode field must be only a number followed, optionally, by an asterisk. Multi-dimensional size specifiers are not supported for these datatypes.

Strings, which are defined as a set of characters, can be represented in VOTable as a fixed- or variable-length array of characters:

<FIELD name="unboundedString" datatype="char" arraysize="*"/>

A 1D array of strings can be represented as a 2D array of characters, but given the logic above, it is possible to define a variable-length array of fixed-length strings, but not a fixed-length array of variable-length strings.

E02: Incorrect number of elements in array. Expected multiple of x, got y

The number of array elements in the data does not match that specified in the FIELD specifier.

E03: ‘x’ does not parse as a complex number

Complex numbers should be two values separated by whitespace.

References: 1.1, 1.2

E04: Invalid bit value ‘x’

A bit array should be a string of ‘0’s and ‘1’s.

References: 1.1, 1.2

E05: Invalid boolean value ‘x’

A boolean value should be one of the following strings (case insensitive) in the TABLEDATA format:

'TRUE', 'FALSE', '1', '0', 'T', 'F', '\0', ' ', '?'

and in BINARY format:

'T', 'F', '1', '0', '\0', ' ', '?'

References: 1.1, 1.2

E06: Unknown datatype ‘x’ on field ‘y’

The supported datatypes are:

double, float, bit, boolean, unsignedByte, short, int, long,
floatComplex, doubleComplex, char, unicodeChar

The following non-standard aliases are also supported, but in these case W13 will be raised:

string        -> char
unicodeString -> unicodeChar
int16         -> short
int32         -> int
int64         -> long
float32       -> float
float64       -> double

References: 1.1, 1.2

E09: ‘x’ must have a value attribute

The MIN, MAX and OPTION elements must always have a value attribute.

References: 1.1, 1.2

E10: ‘datatype’ attribute required on all ‘FIELD’ elements

From VOTable 1.1 and later, FIELD and PARAM elements must have a datatype field.

References: 1.1, 1.2

E11: precision ‘x’ is invalid

The precision attribute is meant to express the number of significant digits, either as a number of decimal places (e.g. precision="F2" or equivalently precision="2" to express 2 significant figures after the decimal point), or as a number of significant figures (e.g. precision="E5" indicates a relative precision of 10-5).

It is validated using the following regular expression:

[EF]?[1-9][0-9]*

References: 1.1, 1.2

E12: width must be a positive integer, got ‘x’

The width attribute is meant to indicate to the application the number of characters to be used for input or output of the quantity.

References: 1.1, 1.2

E13: Invalid arraysize attribute ‘x’

From the VOTable 1.2 spec:

A table cell can contain an array of a given primitive type, with a fixed or variable number of elements; the array may even be multidimensional. For instance, the position of a point in a 3D space can be defined by the following:

<FIELD ID="point_3D" datatype="double" arraysize="3"/>

and each cell corresponding to that definition must contain exactly 3 numbers. An asterisk (*) may be appended to indicate a variable number of elements in the array, as in:

<FIELD ID="values" datatype="int" arraysize="100*"/>

where it is specified that each cell corresponding to that definition contains 0 to 100 integer numbers. The number may be omitted to specify an unbounded array (in practice up to =~2×10⁹ elements).

A table cell can also contain a multidimensional array of a given primitive type. This is specified by a sequence of dimensions separated by the x character, with the first dimension changing fastest; as in the case of a simple array, the last dimension may be variable in length. As an example, the following definition declares a table cell which may contain a set of up to 10 images, each of 64×64 bytes:

<FIELD ID="thumbs" datatype="unsignedByte" arraysize="64×64×10*"/>

References: 1.1, 1.2

E14: value attribute is required for all PARAM elements

All PARAM elements must have a value attribute.

References: 1.1, 1.2

E15: ID attribute is required for all COOSYS elements

All COOSYS elements must have an ID attribute.

Note that the VOTable 1.1 specification says this attribute is optional, but its corresponding schema indicates it is required.

In VOTable 1.2, the COOSYS element is deprecated.

E16: Invalid system attribute ‘x’

The system attribute on the COOSYS element must be one of the following:

'eq_FK4', 'eq_FK5', 'ICRS', 'ecl_FK4', 'ecl_FK5', 'galactic',
'supergalactic', 'xy', 'barycentric', 'geo_app'

References: 1.1

E17: extnum must be a positive integer

extnum attribute must be a positive integer.

References: 1.1, 1.2

E18: type must be ‘results’ or ‘meta’, not ‘x’

The type attribute of the RESOURCE element must be one of “results” or “meta”.

References: 1.1, 1.2

E19: File does not appear to be a VOTABLE

Raised either when the file doesn’t appear to be XML, or the root element is not VOTABLE.

E20: Data has more columns than are defined in the header (x)

The table had only x fields defined, but the data itself has more columns than that.

E21: Data has fewer columns (x) than are defined in the header (y)

The table had x fields defined, but the data itself has only y columns.