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Version History

Version 1.6 — May 12, 2026

Changes include:

  1. Renamed -Killharm to -harmonicfilter, retaining -Killharm as a backward-compatible synonym.
  2. Added -fourierfilter, a full-band Fourier-domain filter.
  3. Added -setlcname option to override the stdin placeholder used as the LC name when input comes from -i -.
  4. Added allcols, changesuffix, gzip, and bzip2 keywords to -o, and auto-detection of compressed light-curve inputs (.gz, .bz2, .fits.gz, .fits.fz, .fits.Z, .fits.bz2) on -i and -l.
  5. Added outputcolumn keyword to -expr (used with listvar/scalar/const) that exposes the computed value in the result table.
  6. Reject duplicate statistic names in -stats at parse time.
  7. Added aggregate functions (mean, median, stddev, sum, vmin, vmax, MAD, weightedmean, wmedian, meddev, medmeddev, kurtosis, skewness, pct<n>, wpct<n>) to the analytic-expression engine, plus parse-time constant folding and per-LC aggregate-call memoisation, which can speed common O(N²) patterns by orders of magnitude.
  8. Fixed parseonedelim*() STRING corruption (regression from the r5380 combinelcs change in 1.51).
  9. Fixed -nonlinfit fitmask heap overflow and missing variable resolution that caused SIGSEGV in MCMC fitting, and a -nonlinfit omodel token-order bug that caused -oneline (and any subsequent global option) to be silently swallowed.
  10. Fixed -linfit format keyword silently swallowing the following argv token.
  11. Fixed -linfit save_model to honour model_nameformat.
  12. Fixed -BLSFixPerDurTc save_phcurve buffer overflow that triggered a glibc abort.
  13. Fixed -addnoise wavelet last-point out-of-bounds read.
  14. Fixed -python and -R undersize allocations under -readall.
  15. Fixed -Starspot fitstarspot_amoeba uninitialised index.
  16. Fixed multiple format-string vulnerabilities in output and Python/R callback code.
  17. Fixed vartools -help and vartools -example output rendering literal %% instead of % in many help strings.
  18. Added the libvartoolspipeline.so shared library providing an in-process embedding API for external programs.
  19. Added make install-python and make check-asan build targets.
  20. Updated configure.ac to handle NumPy 2.x include layout.
  21. Initial release of pyvartools, a Python interface to VARTOOLS — see the Python API documentation for details.

Version 1.52 — March 19, 2026

Changes include:

  1. Added examples for the -difffluxtomag, -restoretimes, and -sortlc commands.
  2. Fixed typo in -restoretimes description.
  3. Fixed -TFA syntax display to correctly show use_lc_errors and weight_by_template_stddev as sub-options of trend_coeff_priors.
  4. Added noinitmark sub-option of markrestrict to -restricttimes syntax display.

Version 1.51 — May 27, 2025

Changes include:

  1. Modified usage of semaphores to fix error preventing parallel processing on Mac OS X.
  2. Sort the TFA template light curves by time for the case where FITS files are used for the templates and matching is done on time.
  3. Added markclip option to -clip, and clip, fitmask and outfitmask options to -TFA and -TFA_SR.
  4. Added fitmask option to -linfit and maskpoints option to -stats.
  5. Added -hatpiflag usercommand.
  6. Added mutexes for cspice to allow parallel processing with this library.
  7. Added maskpoints option to the -rms, -rmsbin, -chi2, -chi2bin and -decorr commands, and fixed bug in -chi2bin and -rmsbin that would lead to invalid results if NaN values were included in the input light curve.
  8. Added maskpoints option to the -binlc, -changeerror, -ensemblerescalesig, -rescalesig, -LS and -BLS commands.
  9. Added markrestrict option to -restricttimes command.
  10. Added maskpoints option to -BLSFixPer, -BLSFixDurTc, -BLSFixPerDurTc, and -aov commands, fixed bug in recent commit for -linfit.
  11. Added dates_Jstet file for the -Jstet example.
  12. Added mask option for the -alarm, -expr, -aov, -autocorrelation, -dftclean, -Jstet and -wwz commands, and added option to include additional description of light curve column in the FITS header COMMENTS in the -o command.
  13. Added the T0 option to -binlc.
  14. Added bitwise OR, AND and complement operators to analytic expression evaluation.
  15. Added pointingflag to -hatpiflag command.
  16. Added combinelcs option to -i and -l, and -addfitskeyword command.
  17. Added help and examples for the -addfitskeyword command.
  18. Added the append and update options to -addfitskeyword.
  19. Added -stitch USERLIBS command.
  20. Added -sortlc command.
  21. Fixed bug in -expr command affecting the == operator.
  22. Added namefromlist option to -o command.
  23. Added option to use var or expr keywords to set parameters for the -BLS, -LS, -aov and -aov_harm commands.
  24. Added ability to specify df rather than nfreq for -BLS.
  25. Added -columnsuffix option.
  26. Added -print command.

Version 1.41 — July 23, 2024

Changes include:

  1. Modified to support compilation for older versions of Python without the Py_SetPath function.
  2. Changes to build process for backward compatibility with Python 2.7.
  3. Updated configure.ac to handle case where python-config sends usage error to stdout instead of stderr.
  4. Added skipfail option to -python command.
  5. Added -splinedetrend USERLIB.
  6. Added some missing error handling to the error2_noexit function.
  7. Fixed segfault in BLS that occurs when there are no out-of-transit points.
  8. Added expr, perJD expr, and perJD fromlc input options for the radec and input-radec parameters of the -converttime command.
  9. Added expr and lcexpr options to coords option for -converttime.
  10. Added isnan function to analytic function list.
  11. Added -BLSFixPerDurTc command.
  12. Added outlier rejection to -linfit.
  13. Added support for providing all as the entry for the column option to -l.
  14. Changed JDTOL from global variable to member of ProgramData struct to avoid compile errors with new gcc.
  15. Added namecommand option to -o command and %b option to nameformat option of -o command.

Version 1.40 — April 15, 2022

Added -match command.

October 30, 2020

Modified build tools and minor change to runpython.c to enable using -python with Python 3 under virtualenv.

October 8, 2020

Removed implicit function declarations to enable compilation on Mac OS Catalina. Thanks to J. Rodriguez for the report.

August 7, 2019

Changes include:

  1. Catch cases where light curve is too short for -BLS, skip the light curve, and report a warning to stderr.
  2. Fixed bug in -restricttimes causing incorrect behavior for the JDlist and imagelist options.

Thanks to L. Sweeney and V. Nascimbeni for the bug reports.

April 17, 2019

Changes include:

  1. Changed build to allow finding R library on macOS.
  2. Fixed bug causing possible segfault in -IFFT.
  3. Fixed bug causing buffer overflow in -Starspot.

Version 1.38 — April 10, 2019

Changes include:

  1. Added -R command.
  2. Added vars option to -restorelc command.
  3. Fixed bugs in the -python command related to specifying different invars and outvars variables, handling the continueprocess keyword, and transferring large amounts of data between VARTOOLS and Python.
  4. Fixed bug in -python where the light curve header might be output multiple times.
  5. Redirect stdout to stderr for output produced by the Python sub-process.

Version 1.37 — April 4, 2019

Changes include:

  1. Added -FFT and -IFFT commands and the -ftuneven extension command (thanks to J. Scargle for the code implementing the algorithm behind -ftuneven).
  2. Modified build to allow specifying the cfitsio library path and include directory.
  3. Ensured the status variable is initialized to zero in various FITS library calls.
  4. Debugged thread locking problems with FITS input/output.
  5. Debugged output of string variables to FITS.
  6. Added copyheader and logcommandline options to -o command.
  7. Modified -TFA and -TFA_SR to allow FITS format trend light curves.

Version 1.36 — December 12, 2018

Changes include:

  1. Added reportharmonic options to -BLS.
  2. Modified -converttime to give an informative error message when performing BJD/TDB conversion without cspice.
  3. Added delimiter option to -inputlcformat and fixed bug in skipchar option.
  4. Added bootstrap option to -LS.
  5. Fixed bug handling default skipping of commented lines when no inputlcformat was given.
  6. Fixed bug in -stats command when multiple weighted-percentile commands are given on the stats string.
  7. Fixed bug in computing output models for the -RunBLSFixDurTc command (thanks to X. Yao for the bug report).

July 11, 2017

Fixed bug preventing compilation when Python is not detected. Thanks to K. Burdge for the bug report.

Version 1.35 — July 3, 2017

Changes include:

  1. Added -python command, -restoretimes command, and expr option to -restricttimes.
  2. Added ability to index arrays in analytic expressions and added new len function analogous to the same function in Python.
  3. Added -f option.
  4. Added delimiter option to output.
  5. Added new astrophysically relevant functions to the astrofuncs USERFUNCS library.
  6. Fixed bug in -aov periodogram header, bug in memory allocation by -BLS, and bug causing NaN S/N estimates in some runs of blsfixdurtc.

Version 1.34 — June 29, 2016

Changes include:

  1. Added stellar density as an input option to -BLS.
  2. Corrected bug in parselc.c preventing compilation when not using CFITSIO.
  3. Fixed README to give correct output from new -LS command.

Version 1.33 — December 9, 2015

Changes include:

  1. Added fixcolumn option to -BLSFixPer and expr input options to -Injecttransit and -BLSFixPer.
  2. Fixed bug in parsing command line for -nonlinfit command and added Gaussian Process Regression to output model file.
  3. Fixed bug in computing log(det(Cov)) in -nonlinfit.
  4. Fixed bug in header of GLS periodogram file.
  5. Modified -BLS to allow searching for transits with periods up to the timebase of the observations; also added stepP, steplogP, adjust-qmin-by-mindt and reduce-nbins options to -BLS.
  6. Added opencommand option to -l.
  7. Modified calling options for -binlc and added bincolumns, tnoshrink and bincolumnsonly options to this command.
  8. Fixed bug in -Injecttransit affecting duration of simulated transits for non-solar stars.
  9. Added bintime option to -addnoise command.
  10. Added line broadening profile to the astrofuncs library.

Version 1.32 — June 6, 2015

Changes include:

  1. Converted to GNU autobuild system to improve portability.
  2. Changed loading of user-developed commands so that the necessary library is automatically loaded when a command is issued (the -L option is no longer needed).
  3. Changed -LS to compute the Generalized Lomb-Scargle Periodogram instead of the traditional LS (the traditional version can still be called using the noGLS keyword).
  4. Added the modelvar, ophcurve and ojdcurve keyword options to -MandelAgolTransit.
  5. Added the phasevar and startphase keyword options to -Phase.

Version 1.31 — April 29, 2015

Fixed bug in restricttimes.c preventing compilation. Thanks to T. Almeyda for the report.

Version 1.31 — January 20, 2015

Changes include:

  1. Added new commands: -BlsFixDurTc, -copylc, -nonlinfit, -resample, and -WWZ.
  2. Significantly revised the -addnoise command to allow simulation of time-correlated noise via a Gaussian process model.
  3. Modified routines for loading user-developed libraries (initialization function now requires more input values).
  4. Auto-sort light curves on input.
  5. Added wmedian and wpct statistics to -stats command.
  6. Added niter and median options to -clip.
  7. Added format option to -linfit.

September 11, 2014

Fixed bug causing buffer overflow or segfault when outputting the model function in the -Killharm command. Thanks to T. Bovaird for the bug report.

July 16, 2014

Corrected bugs related to compiling without libraries and to compiling on Windows.

June 17, 2014

Fixed bug in vartools_functionpointers.h preventing compilation with the PARALLEL option turned off.

Version 1.3 — April 22, 2014

Major update. Changes include:

  1. New commands added: -changevariable, -expr, -if -else -elif -fi, -linfit, -restricttimes, -stats.
  2. New options added: -inputlcformat, -inlistvars, -showinputlistformat, -showinputlcformat, -log-command-line, -functionlist, -L and -F.
  3. New extension commands added: -fastchi2, -jktebop, -macula, -magadd.
  4. Changed the spec keyword to list for all commands (more intuitive).
  5. Changed the syntax for -o to allow greater control over output formatting.
  6. Changed -aov_harm to correct for a singularity which can appear when applying the method to evenly sampled data (thanks to A. Schwarzenberg-Czerny for pointing this out).
  7. Changed -binlc and -clip to handle all light curve related vectors, not just t, mag and err.
  8. Allow reading in rows of arbitrary length from ASCII files.
  9. Major new features include: the ability to handle analytic expressions and assign variable names to input vectors and scalars; the ability to read in many columns from a light curve as vectors and change the vectors which commands operate on using -changevariable; support for user-developed extensions (including adding custom commands and new functions for use with -expr, -linfit, etc.).

July 18, 2013

Added Mac installation notes. Thanks to J. Pepper and his research team.

May 15, 2013

Updated help for the -Jstet command to note a difference between the J statistic computed by VARTOOLS and that defined in Stetson's paper. Thanks to L. Macri for reporting this.

Version 1.202 — April 23, 2012

Changes include:

  1. Fixed bugs in -converttime related to the location of the observer and handling of input-ppm; also corrected bug in -converttime causing loss of timing precision from accumulated rounding errors. Time conversions are now precise to ~0.1 millisecond near JD2000.0.
  2. Reworked the internal method for parsing light curve data; the old method can be restored by deleting -D _USE_PARSELC from the makefile.
  3. Changed -readformat to allow reading in light curves that are missing one or more of the JD, mag, or sig columns.
  4. Fixed memory leak in -getampthresh.
  5. Added substantial code related to supporting user-developed extensions to VARTOOLS (not fully functional in this release and not compiled by default).

February 8, 2012

Fixed bug in -decorr causing LCColumn_?_coeff_err_?_? to not be output correctly. Thanks to D. Flateau for the report.

Version 1.201 — February 3, 2012

Fixed bug in -BLSFixPer causing incorrect periods to be printed to the ASCII output table when using list. Thanks to J. Pepper for the bug report.

February 1, 2012

Changes include:

  1. Fixed segfault when using -inputlistformat with -SYSREM.
  2. Corrected a bug in the output table when combining -header and -redirectstats.

Thanks to D. Flateau for the bug report.

November 10, 2011

Updated descriptions of some commands on the website.

Version 1.2 — October 21, 2011

Significant changes including:

  1. Added -addnoise and -converttime commands, and -example, -inputlistformat and -parallel options.
  2. Significant internal revisions to allow for parallel processing of light curves (affecting many commands which had previously used global or static variables; there may be bugs introduced as a result).
  3. Added options to most commands to specify the column number for parameters taken from the input list file.
  4. Added inpututc option to -readformat.
  5. Changed -help to only provide a brief synopsis of the program (-help all gives the previous behavior).
  6. Changed -MandelAgolTransit and -SoftenedTransit to internally vary the initial and final transit epochs rather than the period and epoch, and improved the initial parameter estimates based on -BLS.
  7. Added dilute option to -Injecttransit to simulate diluted transits.

Version 1.158 — April 6, 2011

Changes include:

  1. Added fittrap option to -BLS and -BLSFixPer, which fits a trapezoid transit at each peak period.
  2. Added nobinnedrms option to -BLS (speeds up the run but suppresses the BLS_SN statistic; use when not relying on BLS_SN to select transits).
  3. Added ophcurve and ojdcurve options to -BLS.
  4. Fixed bug in -BLS which caused period "-1" peaks to be listed before the correct peaks when fewer than Npeaks periods were found.
  5. Added -oneline option for easier to read output when processing a single light curve.

Version 1.157 — April 5, 2011

Fixed bug in -BLS causing integer overflow for large frequency number searches. Thanks to B. Sipocz for pointing out the bug and the fix.

Version 1.156 — March 1, 2011

Fixed bug in -BLS causing a memory leak. Thanks to R. Siverd for debugging this.

Version 1.155 — February 25, 2011

Fixed bug in -BLS causing the wrong transit time center to be output. Thanks to T. Beatty for reporting the bug.

Version 1.154 — February 14, 2011

Changes include:

  1. Minor change to inputoutput.c to correct unpredictable behavior when reading FITS files (thanks to J. Rasor for reporting the bug).
  2. Fixed bug related to the file names of BLS periodograms and added the version number to the help and usage functions (thanks to R. Siverd for the report/suggestion).

Version 1.153 — February 10, 2011

Changes include:

  1. Added the ability to read binary FITS table files.
  2. Renamed the old -fluxtomag command as -difffluxtomag and added a new -fluxtomag command.
  3. Added option to use amplitude spectra with -dftclean.
  4. Added replace option to -medianfilter command.
  5. Improvements to the -Phase command.
  6. Fixed bug in -starspot which prevented the model from being output when no fitting was done.
  7. Modified output of -BLS and -BLSFixPer to include the epoch of transit center for the first transit after the start of the light curve.

Version 1.152 — August 13, 2009

Changes include:

  1. Added the -microlens command.
  2. Changed the DFT routine in -dftclean from the brute force to the FDFT algorithm.
  3. Fixed a bug in the calculation of S/N for the -LS command.
  4. Added GNU license.

Version 1.151 — May 19, 2009

Added the -findblends command (thanks to Kris Stanek for the suggestion).

Version 1.15 — March 3, 2009

Changes include:

  1. Added whiten and clip options to -aov, -aov_harm and -LS commands. Also added SNR output to these commands, and the option to determine the SNR at a fixed period. Note that the default behavior for -aov now gives the AoV statistic and its SNR; previously it gave the SNR of the log AoV statistic, which tended to suppress detection significance for large amplitude variables. Use the uselog option to restore the previous behavior.
  2. Added the -Injecttransit command.
  3. Fixed a bug in the AoV peak finder that could cause it to miss the peak in some cases.
  4. Fixed a bug in the -MandelAgolTransit algorithm that caused the transit to appear at the wrong phase for some values of omega. Changed -MandelAgolTransit to input/output omega in degrees.
  5. Fixed an incompatibility between -clip and several other commands.
  6. Added the -savelc and -restorelc commands.
  7. Changed -autocorrelation to use the Discrete Correlation Function (binning is done on the ACF rather than on the light curve, which also yields error estimates for the ACF).
  8. Added the ability to reference arbitrary previously computed statistics by output column name or number (not yet fully extended to all commands).
  9. Added the option of reading in signals from a file to the -GetLSAmpThresh command.
  10. Added the option of simultaneously fitting a Fourier series to a light curve with TFA to the -TFA_SR command.

December 11, 2008

Changes include:

  1. Changed -Killharm to allow different output formats.
  2. Fixed a bug with the phaserel and amprel options to -Injectharm.
  3. Added an example on injecting and recovering a simulated RR Lyrae signal.

December 10, 2008

Substantial changes:

  1. Added new commands: -autocorrelation, -changeerror, -dftclean, -Injectharm, and -TFA_SR.
  2. Added new options: -matchstringid, -quiet, -randseed, -numbercolumns, -listcommands.
  3. Changed the -help option to allow displaying help for individual commands.
  4. Modified -Killharm to allow injectharm and fix options for inputting periods; also added the fitonly option and changed the output format/column headings.
  5. Modified -TFA to allow specification of readformat of trend light curves.
  6. Added fitRV options to -MandelAgolTransit (not fully debugged; not recommended for production use).

September 25, 2008

Changed the Mean_Mag output for the -Killharm command to be the fitted mean rather than the statistical mean, in line with Example 2.

September 22, 2008

Added -nobuffer option (thanks to Rob Siverd).

August 18, 2008

Fixed segfault when reading long input lists (thanks to Josh Pepper).

July 31, 2008

Added -headeronly option.

July 2, 2008

Modified to allow input from stdin.

May 27, 2008

Modified the -BLS and -BLSFixPer commands to output the number of points in transit, the number of transits, the number of points before and after transit, the red and white noise of the signal after removing the BLS model, and the signal-to-pink-noise ratio of the transit.

May 25, 2008

Fixed segfault in initialize_tfa routine. Added examples. (Thanks to Rob Siverd.)

March 26, 2008

Fixed memory leak in -aov command. (Thanks to David Nataf.)

January 16, 2008

Fixed isinf portability problem. (Thanks to Alceste Bonanos.)

November 26, 2007

Added -SYSREM and -binlc commands and the -jdtol option.

November 19, 2007

Added -TFA and -fluxtomag commands.

November 15, 2007

Added -MandelAgolTransit, -GetLSAmpThresh, and -aov_harm commands.