[task #15468] Manage vector values inside tables

[Mohammad Akhlaghi]

Follow-up Comment #1, task #15468 (project gnuastro):

Thanks a lot for bringing this up. This is an interesting format to keep
columns with similar values in a FITS table without having to increase the
official column number.

Following your task report, it just occurred to me that we can specify
sub-columns with a `.N' added to the column name for example in the example
you sent, if you wanted the third sub-column of the `apflux_g' column, you can
run a command like this:


asttable tractor-0397m080.fits -capflux_g.3


We can similarly extend the concept to Gnuastro's plain-text table format
<https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuastro/manual/html_node/Gnuastro-text-table-format.html>
(to easily print on the command-line or create FITS tables with this feature),
so the sub-column metadata would be printed like this (the `.M' part is new):


# Column N.M: NAME [UNIT, TYPE, BLANK] COMMENT


For example, following the example in that section of the book, such, the
meta-data for sub-column 3 of column 5 in a table would look like this: 


# Column 5.3: column name [km/s,f32,-99] Redshift as speed


Unfortunately I am too busy to implement this now, but it is a very good
suggestion to add this feature, I can see many scenarios where such
array-column can be very useful. So I just tried to build upon the initial
suggestion with some possibly useful implementation details.

Until I get the chance to implement this, if anyone is interested to try
implementing it, any help would be very welcome.

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