Health check for a FITS catalog: should have column descriptions, units and should not fail to load with astropy.

fitscathealth.py

import warnings
import sys
import astropy.io.fits as pyfits
from astropy.table import Table

print("opening FITS file ...")
f = pyfits.open(sys.argv[1])

print("extensions: ", [e.name for e in f])

for i, col in enumerate(f[1].columns, start=1):
	colname = col.name
	fmt = col.format
	unit = f[1].header.get('TUNIT%d' % i)
	desc = f[1].header.get('TCOMM%d' % i)
	#if fmt in ('E', 'D', 'J') and not fmt.endswith('A'):
	#	if unit is None:
	#		warnings.warn('no unit for column "%s", check if that is okay' % colname)
	if desc is None:
		warnings.warn('no description for column "%s"' % colname)
	print('%3d: %s [comment=%s] %s unit=%s' % (i, colname, desc, fmt, unit))

print("opening as a Table ...")
t = Table.read(sys.argv[1])