8.2 Filetype

The type of file determines the medium on which the file is located (e.g., disk or network) and, hence, which internal device driver is used by CFITSIO to read and/or write the file. Currently supported types are

        file://  - file on local magnetic disk (default)
        ftp://   - a readonly file accessed with the anonymous FTP protocol.
                   It also supports  ftp://username:password@hostname/...
                   for accessing password-protected ftp sites.
        http://  - a readonly file accessed with the HTTP protocol.  It
                   supports username:password just like the ftp driver.
                   Proxy HTTP servers are supported using the http_proxy
                   environment variable (see following note).
      stream://  - special driver to read an input FITS file from the stdin
                   stream, and/or write an output FITS file to the stdout
		   stream.  This driver is fragile and has limited
		   functionality (see the following note).
      gsiftp://  - access files on a computational grid using the gridftp
                   protocol in the Globus toolkit (see following note).
        root://  - uses the CERN root protocol for writing as well as
                   reading files over the network.
        shmem:// - opens or creates a file which persists in the computer's
                   shared memory.
        mem://   - opens a temporary file in core memory.  The file
                   disappears when the program exits so this is mainly
                   useful for test purposes when a permanent output file
                   is not desired.

If the filetype is not specified, then type file:// is assumed. The double slashes '//' are optional and may be omitted in most cases.