'The format argument to this class\'s initializer may come in many
forms.  This uses the given column format class ``cls`` to convert
to a format of that type.
TODO: There should be an abc base class for column format classes'

@staticmethod
def _convert_format(format, cls):

    if isinstance(format, _BaseColumnFormat):
        return (format, format.recformat)
    if (format in NUMPY2FITS):
        with suppress(VerifyError):
            recformat = format
            format = cls.from_recformat(format)
    try:
        format = cls(format)
        recformat = format.recformat
    except VerifyError:
        raise VerifyError('Illegal    format    `{}`.'.format(format))
    return (format, recformat)
