votable binary parsing appears to fail on null columns

Example:

>>> import requests
>>> url = "http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/votable/-b64?-source=V/127A/mash1&-out.max=20&-out.meta=hu2D"
>>> result = requests.get(url)
>>> with open('test.vot', 'w') as fh:
...       fh.write(result.text)
>>> from astropy.table import Table
>>> tbl = Table.read('test.vot')
>>> print(tbl)

results in:

<Table masked=True length=18>
n_PNG      PNG           Name     ...  ObsDate    img   AssocData
                                  ...     d
bytes1   bytes12       bytes13    ...   int32    bytes5   bytes4
------ ------------ ------------- ... ---------- ------ ---------
     T G209.1-08.2  PHR0615-0025  ...  808464672  fitsP      G227
     . 3-12.0 PHR06 33-1808 @X��� ... 1718187123  TG212      .2-0
     4 .7 PHR0633-0 135 @X�z�G�� ... 1346843185  4.2-0      2.4
     P HR0645-0217  @YP������a�P ...  858666541  06.8       PHR0
     6 46-1235 @Yf� �,_��)2��n\B ...  858667296  PHR06      48-0
     7 19 @Y��z�G�
R��,_�B
 ... 1346916912  650+0      013
     @ Y������?�'�}         '�|B� ...  892415280  257 @       Y��

 �Q���
��r               ...  892411968  Y�,_�      ���#
     �       Q�
�Bp               ... 1506109904  6��)      Z+<M
     ^          oC;               ...  744472613  �g���       �A�
                 A�             E ...  801727228    �BD        B<
                    �1012 fitsLG2 ...  155354624
                    3 fitsTG217.2 ...    4338176
     E            a tsTG214.6+02. ...          0                R
     8 1015 fitsTG2 27.2-03.4 PHR ...          1      E      1016
       fitsTG222.9- 01.1 PHR0705- ...    2452667  1017       fits
     P G237.9-07.2  FP0711-2531   ...  825241912   fits      TG22
     6 .4-01.3 PHR0 711-1238 @Z�� ...  543582580  sLG22      5.2+

If you drop the ‘CS’ column (which is a null column), the table parses correctly, so it looks like the astropy votable is incorrectly handling the null column.

cc @gilleslandais

[keflavich]

Yes, did both

On Fri, May 24, 2019, 18:53 P. L. Lim [e-mail] wrote:

There is BINARY and BINARY2 – Did you try both?

FWIW, the binary parse is here

https://github.com/astropy/astropy/blob/51db6a64ffb6140cca4e76159a94cee38e3af745/astropy/io/votable/tree.py#L2603

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[pllim]

There is BINARY and BINARY2 – Did you try both?

FWIW, the binary parse is here

https://github.com/astropy/astropy/blob/51db6a64ffb6140cca4e76159a94cee38e3af745/astropy/io/votable/tree.py#L2603