MPCDCVT

Name

mpcdcvt

Purpose

Convert to and from Minor Planet Center packed designation format.

Description

A Minor Planet Center designation starts with J, or K. A "normal"
desination starts with a number. Either type can have a leading '('
that indicates it is a secondary designation. This leading character is
not stripped off. If it does not start with J, K, or a numeral, the
name is left alone.
This routine converts the input into the other form.

Calling Sequence

outstr = mpcdcvt(instr)

Inputs

instr - String (or array) to be converted.

Optional Input Parameters

Keyword Input Parameters

Outputs

outstr - String (or array) of converted strings.

Keyword Output Parameters

Common Blocks

Side Effects

Restrictions

Procedure

Modification History

2000/05/03, Written by Marc W. Buie, Lowell Observatory
2002/03/22, MWB, eliminated a minor nuisance message during conversion.
2002/05/28, MWB, fixed a formatting bug for numbered asteroids.
2003/08/12, MWB, fixed a bug when converting 2000-2029 designations to
packed format.
2015/04/25, MWB, massive rewrite for new packed format (which will fail
once we have more than 619,999 numbered asteroids