BRIEF User's Guide





Last revised on 2002 DEC 13 by W. L. Taber.



Abstract




BRIEF is a command-line program that summarizes the ephemeris contents and time coverage for one or more SPK files.



Summary




BRIEF is a command line program that allows you to easily summarize the ephemeris coverage of one or more SPK files. You may summarize files individually or as if they were combined as a single complete ephemeris.



Usage




BRIEF is run by typing the name of the program at a shell prompt.

   brief [-option(s)] file [file ...]
A wide variety of options may be specified on the command line giving you a great deal of flexibility in the operation and summary capability of the programs



Options



Any of the following options may be specified. Some options may disable other options. For example if you request that objects be displayed with their NAIF id-codes only (suppressing the english name of the objects), BRIEF will not allow you to sort the objects by their english names. (You may specify this option, but it's ignored.) We have not attempted to spell out all of the possible conflicts here, since for the most part you'd be unlikely to specify conflicting options intentionally.

-n

display bodies using only numeric id-codes.
-o

order objects by english name
-t

display results in a tabular format.
-g

arrange objects in a tabular display so that objects with the same coverage are grouped together. This option has no effect if the -t option is not supplied.
-c

treat bodies and centers of motion as a single entity when determining coverage
-h

display help text
-v

display the current version of the program
-a

treat all files as a combined ephemeris for the purpose of summarizing coverage.
-f

provide a file containing full path names of files to summarize. This flag is used as shown below
                        -f list_of_sources.file
-sb[bod]

create a summary for the specified body (multiple bodies may be specified by listing a numeric range of id-codes or using this option repeatedly. Numeric ranges must be given as a single word and should be specified as [lower:upper].
-sc[bod]

create a summary for bodies whose trajectories are relative to the specied body or bodies. This option may be used with a range or may be used repeatedly. Numeric ranges are may be used here and are specified in the same manner as for the -sb option.
-[bod]

create a summary for the specified body. Note that this can be confused with one of the previous two options if the name of the object begins with sc or sb (admittedly this is an unlikely event, but can possibly lead to misinterpretation by the program).
-sec

display times "rounded inward" to the nearest second.
-min

display times "rounded inward" to the nearest minute.
-hour

display times "rounded inward" to the nearest hour.
-day

display times "rounded inward" to the nearest day.
-at epoch

summarize only for objects that have coverage at the specified epoch. The epoch must be a single word.
-from epoch1
-to epoch2


summarize only for object that have coverage during the entire interval from epoch1 to epoch2. Both epochs must be expressed as a single word.