[GRASS-user] run commands sequentially - help please

GRASS GRASS user
1

Hi all,

First of all you should know that I’m a beginner using GRASS.

I want to create a 3D map from a text file with coordinates. I think the commands I will need are the following:

### 1 - v.in.ascii### 2 - g.region### 3 - v.surf.rst### 4 – nviz

But I don’t want to write the commands every time I want to see a map. So I desire to do this sequentially. How can I do that? This way I’ll only need to run one command and the map happens.

Thanks for your help.

Cumprimentos/Best Regards,

Tiago Salgueiro

2

Dirty approach,

I used this approach when doing mass imports of files and only had slight variations.

under linux (shoudl work too in cygwin, dos batch would achieve the same thing)

I created a script file (executable text Basicaly) that for you would look like

for a script named runme.sh

#(what ever header you need for your shell)
#!/bin/sh

v.in.asci (string of settings);
g.region (string of settings);
v.surf.rst (string of settings);
nviz (string of settings);

#end of script

then at the $prompt you need to make the file executable
$chmod 777 runme.sh

then at the $prompt inside a GRASS session you can run the file
$./runme.sh

boom!

notice in the script that each line ends in a ; (semi-colon) this separates each command

Note also that sometimes options need to be in quotes
eg
v.in.ascii option1=“settings string that may contain escape characters or spaces”;

Alternatively you can capture what you enter at the CLI using

From: grassuser-bounces@grass.itc.it [mailto:grassuser-bounces@grass.itc.it] On Behalf Of Tiago Salgueiro
Sent: August 3, 2006 11:24
To: grassuser@grass.itc.it
Subject: [GRASS-user] run commands sequentially - help please

Hi all,

First of all you should know that I’m a beginner using GRASS.

I want to create a 3D map from a text file with coordinates. I think the commands I will need are the following:

### 1 - v.in.ascii### 2 - g.region### 3 - v.surf.rst### 4 – nviz

But I don’t want to write the commands every time I want to see a map. So I desire to do this sequentially. How can I do that? This way I’ll only need to run one command and the map happens.

Thanks for your help.

Cumprimentos/Best Regards,

Tiago Salgueiro

3

A few elaborations that might help unix-newbies:

On 3-Aug-06, at 12:25, Sampson, David wrote:

Dirty approach,

I used this approach when doing mass imports of files and only had slight variations.

under linux (shoudl work too in cygwin, dos batch would achieve the same thing)

I created a script file (executable text Basicaly) that for you would look like

for a script named runme.sh

#(what ever header you need for your shell)
#!/bin/sh

Putting $!/bin/sh at the top of a script will ensure that the file gets interpreted by whatever the default shell is on the system. Forcing other shells is also possible here, but using just “sh” means you get the default (i.e. as opposed to bash, csh, tcsh, ksh, etc etc).

v.in.asci (string of settings);

note that should be ascii with two i’s

g.region (string of settings);
v.surf.rst (string of settings);
nviz (string of settings);

#end of script

then at the $prompt you need to make the file executable
$chmod 777 runme.sh

Note this makes the file readable, writeable and executable to everyone on the system. If this is just your own private linux or windows box, you probably don’t care, but if someone is doing this on a multi-user system, you might not want other people to be able to edit your files. Using chmod 755 would make it readable and executable to anyone, but only writeable to you, the owner of the file. An alternative, more user-friendly syntax is

chmod u+x runme.sh

which simply says add the execute permission (“+x”) for the User (“u”) that owns runme.sh

then at the $prompt inside a GRASS session you can run the file
$./runme.sh

boom!

notice in the script that each line ends in a ; (semi-colon) this separates each command

I don’t think you need that. It’s C syntax to do that, not needed in a shell script unless you’re concatenating multiple commands on to a single line.

Note also that sometimes options need to be in quotes
eg
v.in.ascii option1=“settings string that may contain escape characters or spaces”;

Alternatively you can capture what you enter at the CLI using

From: grassuser-bounces@grass.itc.it [mailto:grassuser-bounces@grass.itc.it] On Behalf Of Tiago Salgueiro
Sent: August 3, 2006 11:24
To: grassuser@grass.itc.it
Subject: [GRASS-user] run commands sequentially - help please

Hi all,

First of all you should know that I’m a beginner using GRASS.

I want to create a 3D map from a text file with coordinates. I think the commands I will need are the following:

### 1 - v.in.ascii### 2 - g.region### 3 - v.surf.rst### 4 – nviz

But I don’t want to write the commands every time I want to see a map. So I desire to do this sequentially. How can I do that? This way I’ll only need to run one command and the map happens.

Thanks for your help.

Cumprimentos/Best Regards,

Tiago Salgueiro

grassuser mailing list
grassuser@grass.itc.it
http://grass.itc.it/mailman/listinfo/grassuser

4

Scott,

Thanks for the cleanup… now it is not so dirty

BTW I remember Markus showing us a way to save commands you type to the GRASS CLI into a script (think is was X.save where X=something)… this is good if you want to perform it once in geenral and then edit the script for variations. Couldn’t find it off hand in the docs.

I’d be interested to know if you could set and use variables in the approach we used bellow. I never tried. but if you could say use output=$OUTMAP and input=$INMAP and then you can loop for a series of maps. and the input and output are auto generated based on the basefile name.

Can someone provide a sample snippet of how this might look?

Would the for loop be part of the said script, or would you call one script from another passing variables?

This might be good if it is a repeated process you will use ALOT… a type of mild automation.

I notice that in grass 6.1 there is lots of information in the OUTPUT window of what is passed from the command… can you capture this?.. I have not tried any of the icons… if so then this is another way to maybe build your script. I’m likin 6.1 more and more

Just some thoughts.

From: Scott Mitchell [mailto:smitch@mac.com]
Sent: August 3, 2006 12:47
To: Sampson, David
Cc: Tiago Salgueiro; grassuser@grass.itc.it
Subject: Re: [GRASS-user] run commands sequentially - help please

A few elaborations that might help unix-newbies:

On 3-Aug-06, at 12:25, Sampson, David wrote:

Dirty approach,

I used this approach when doing mass imports of files and only had slight variations.

under linux (shoudl work too in cygwin, dos batch would achieve the same thing)

I created a script file (executable text Basicaly) that for you would look like

for a script named runme.sh

#(what ever header you need for your shell)
#!/bin/sh

Putting $!/bin/sh at the top of a script will ensure that the file gets interpreted by whatever the default shell is on the system. Forcing other shells is also possible here, but using just “sh” means you get the default (i.e. as opposed to bash, csh, tcsh, ksh, etc etc).

v.in.asci (string of settings);

note that should be ascii with two i’s

g.region (string of settings);
v.surf.rst (string of settings);
nviz (string of settings);

#end of script

then at the $prompt you need to make the file executable
$chmod 777 runme.sh

Note this makes the file readable, writeable and executable to everyone on the system. If this is just your own private linux or windows box, you probably don’t care, but if someone is doing this on a multi-user system, you might not want other people to be able to edit your files. Using chmod 755 would make it readable and executable to anyone, but only writeable to you, the owner of the file. An alternative, more user-friendly syntax is

chmod u+x runme.sh

which simply says add the execute permission (“+x”) for the User (“u”) that owns runme.sh

then at the $prompt inside a GRASS session you can run the file
$./runme.sh

boom!

notice in the script that each line ends in a ; (semi-colon) this separates each command

I don’t think you need that. It’s C syntax to do that, not needed in a shell script unless you’re concatenating multiple commands on to a single line.

Note also that sometimes options need to be in quotes
eg
v.in.ascii option1=“settings string that may contain escape characters or spaces”;

Alternatively you can capture what you enter at the CLI using

From: grassuser-bounces@grass.itc.it [mailto:grassuser-bounces@grass.itc.it] On Behalf Of Tiago Salgueiro
Sent: August 3, 2006 11:24
To: grassuser@grass.itc.it
Subject: [GRASS-user] run commands sequentially - help please

Hi all,

First of all you should know that I’m a beginner using GRASS.

I want to create a 3D map from a text file with coordinates. I think the commands I will need are the following:

### 1 - v.in.ascii### 2 - g.region### 3 - v.surf.rst### 4 – nviz

But I don’t want to write the commands every time I want to see a map. So I desire to do this sequentially. How can I do that? This way I’ll only need to run one command and the map happens.

Thanks for your help.

Cumprimentos/Best Regards,

Tiago Salgueiro

grassuser mailing list
grassuser@grass.itc.it
http://grass.itc.it/mailman/listinfo/grassuser

5

Scott,

I have actually done some Perl scripting that does this automatically… not sure if that would help, and it is very coarse Perl, but it gets the job done. Example, I had about 500 ascii grids to import. Created a script that would get the list of the files, create the command r.in.arc for each of these, and then a separate script (which I could combine into one) to mosaic the rasters together. Actually, the Perl script created a shell script…

Is this the thought that you were onto?

Kevin Slover

Coastal / GIS Specialist

2872 Woodcock Blvd Suite 230

Atlanta GA 30341

(P) 678-530-0022

(F) 678-530-0044

From: grassuser-bounces@grass.itc.it [mailto:grassuser-bounces@grass.itc.it] On Behalf Of Sampson, David
Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2006 12:58 PM
To: Scott Mitchell
Cc: grassuser@grass.itc.it
Subject: RE: [GRASS-user] run commands sequentially - help please

Scott,

Thanks for the cleanup… now it is not so dirty

BTW I remember Markus showing us a way to save commands you type to the GRASS CLI into a script (think is was X.save where X=something)… this is good if you want to perform it once in geenral and then edit the script for variations. Couldn’t find it off hand in the docs.

I’d be interested to know if you could set and use variables in the approach we used bellow. I never tried. but if you could say use output=$OUTMAP and input=$INMAP and then you can loop for a series of maps. and the input and output are auto generated based on the basefile name.

Can someone provide a sample snippet of how this might look?

Would the for loop be part of the said script, or would you call one script from another passing variables?

This might be good if it is a repeated process you will use ALOT… a type of mild automation.

I notice that in grass 6.1 there is lots of information in the OUTPUT window of what is passed from the command… can you capture this?.. I have not tried any of the icons… if so then this is another way to maybe build your script. I’m likin 6.1 more and more

Just some thoughts.

From: Scott Mitchell [mailto:smitch@mac.com]
Sent: August 3, 2006 12:47
To: Sampson, David
Cc: Tiago Salgueiro; grassuser@grass.itc.it
Subject: Re: [GRASS-user] run commands sequentially - help please

A few elaborations that might help unix-newbies:

On 3-Aug-06, at 12:25, Sampson, David wrote:

Dirty approach,

I used this approach when doing mass imports of files and only had slight variations.

under linux (shoudl work too in cygwin, dos batch would achieve the same thing)

I created a script file (executable text Basicaly) that for you would look like

for a script named runme.sh

#(what ever header you need for your shell)

#!/bin/sh

Putting $!/bin/sh at the top of a script will ensure that the file gets interpreted by whatever the default shell is on the system. Forcing other shells is also possible here, but using just “sh” means you get the default (i.e. as opposed to bash, csh, tcsh, ksh, etc etc).

v.in.asci (string of settings);

note that should be ascii with two i’s

g.region (string of settings);

v.surf.rst (string of settings);

nviz (string of settings);

#end of script

then at the $prompt you need to make the file executable

$chmod 777 runme.sh

Note this makes the file readable, writeable and executable to everyone on the system. If this is just your own private linux or windows box, you probably don’t care, but if someone is doing this on a multi-user system, you might not want other people to be able to edit your files. Using chmod 755 would make it readable and executable to anyone, but only writeable to you, the owner of the file. An alternative, more user-friendly syntax is

chmod u+x runme.sh

which simply says add the execute permission (“+x”) for the User (“u”) that owns runme.sh

then at the $prompt inside a GRASS session you can run the file

$./runme.sh

boom!

notice in the script that each line ends in a ; (semi-colon) this separates each command

I don’t think you need that. It’s C syntax to do that, not needed in a shell script unless you’re concatenating multiple commands on to a single line.

Note also that sometimes options need to be in quotes

eg

v.in.ascii option1=“settings string that may contain escape characters or spaces”;

Alternatively you can capture what you enter at the CLI using

From: grassuser-bounces@grass.itc.it [mailto:grassuser-bounces@grass.itc.it] On Behalf Of Tiago Salgueiro
Sent: August 3, 2006 11:24
To: grassuser@grass.itc.it
Subject: [GRASS-user] run commands sequentially - help please

Hi all,

First of all you should know that I’m a beginner using GRASS.

I want to create a 3D map from a text file with coordinates. I think the commands I will need are the following:

### 1 - v.in.ascii### 2 - g.region### 3 - v.surf.rst### 4 – nviz

But I don’t want to write the commands every time I want to see a map. So I desire to do this sequentially. How can I do that? This way I’ll only need to run one command and the map happens.

Thanks for your help.

Cumprimentos/Best Regards,

Tiago Salgueiro

grassuser mailing list

grassuser@grass.itc.it

http://grass.itc.it/mailman/listinfo/grassuser

6

On 3-Aug-06, at 12:57, Sampson, David wrote:

Scott,

BTW I remember Markus showing us a way to save commands you type to the GRASS CLI into a script (think is was X.save where X=something)… this is good if you want to perform it once in geenral and then edit the script for variations. Couldn’t find it off hand in the docs.

If you’re using the command line, then you’re just using a UNIX shell, customized to be able to run the GRASS modules. UNIX shells tend to have their own history mechanisms, so we just take advantage of that. If I remember correctly, the GRASS startup fires up the bash shell, and manipulates this to store the history during GRASS sessions into the mapset directory (in a .bash_history file). So you can actually go find that file (it’s just a text file) and look in it to see what has been entered - you can also use the bash history command - try typing that in from the GRASS prompt, and you should see a list of everything you’ve been doing. You can also redirect it to a file. Lots of possibilities - not sure which way was shown to you, but just looking in $MAPSET/.bash_history and extracting the part you want is simple enough.

I’d be interested to know if you could set and use variables in the approach we used bellow. I never tried. but if you could say use output=$OUTMAP and input=$INMAP and then you can loop for a series of maps. and the input and output are auto generated based on the basefile name.

Can someone provide a sample snippet of how this might look?

Would the for loop be part of the said script, or would you call one script from another passing variables?

This might be good if it is a repeated process you will use ALOT… a type of mild automation.

Definitely. I see now that at least one example is already posted. You may be interested in the BASH scripting guide at http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

I notice that in grass 6.1 there is lots of information in the OUTPUT window of what is passed from the command… can you capture this?.. I have not tried any of the icons… if so then this is another way to maybe build your script. I’m likin 6.1 more and more

There is a way to get at it in the GUI I’m told, but I still keep using the command line myself…

Just some thoughts.

From: Scott Mitchell [mailto:smitch@mac.com]
Sent: August 3, 2006 12:47
To: Sampson, David
Cc: Tiago Salgueiro; grassuser@grass.itc.it
Subject: Re: [GRASS-user] run commands sequentially - help please

A few elaborations that might help unix-newbies:

On 3-Aug-06, at 12:25, Sampson, David wrote:

Dirty approach,

I used this approach when doing mass imports of files and only had slight variations.

under linux (shoudl work too in cygwin, dos batch would achieve the same thing)

I created a script file (executable text Basicaly) that for you would look like

for a script named runme.sh

#(what ever header you need for your shell)
#!/bin/sh

Putting $!/bin/sh at the top of a script will ensure that the file gets interpreted by whatever the default shell is on the system. Forcing other shells is also possible here, but using just “sh” means you get the default (i.e. as opposed to bash, csh, tcsh, ksh, etc etc).

v.in.asci (string of settings);

note that should be ascii with two i’s

g.region (string of settings);
v.surf.rst (string of settings);
nviz (string of settings);

#end of script

then at the $prompt you need to make the file executable
$chmod 777 runme.sh

Note this makes the file readable, writeable and executable to everyone on the system. If this is just your own private linux or windows box, you probably don’t care, but if someone is doing this on a multi-user system, you might not want other people to be able to edit your files. Using chmod 755 would make it readable and executable to anyone, but only writeable to you, the owner of the file. An alternative, more user-friendly syntax is

chmod u+x runme.sh

which simply says add the execute permission (“+x”) for the User (“u”) that owns runme.sh

then at the $prompt inside a GRASS session you can run the file
$./runme.sh

boom!

notice in the script that each line ends in a ; (semi-colon) this separates each command

I don’t think you need that. It’s C syntax to do that, not needed in a shell script unless you’re concatenating multiple commands on to a single line.

Note also that sometimes options need to be in quotes
eg
v.in.ascii option1=“settings string that may contain escape characters or spaces”;

Alternatively you can capture what you enter at the CLI using

From: grassuser-bounces@grass.itc.it [mailto:grassuser-bounces@grass.itc.it] On Behalf Of Tiago Salgueiro
Sent: August 3, 2006 11:24
To: grassuser@grass.itc.it
Subject: [GRASS-user] run commands sequentially - help please

Hi all,

First of all you should know that I’m a beginner using GRASS.

I want to create a 3D map from a text file with coordinates. I think the commands I will need are the following:

### 1 - v.in.ascii### 2 - g.region### 3 - v.surf.rst### 4 – nviz

But I don’t want to write the commands every time I want to see a map. So I desire to do this sequentially. How can I do that? This way I’ll only need to run one command and the map happens.

Thanks for your help.

Cumprimentos/Best Regards,

Tiago Salgueiro

grassuser mailing list
grassuser@grass.itc.it
http://grass.itc.it/mailman/listinfo/grassuser

7

Actually, Tiago was the original poster, I just weighed in with some code comments.

Scott

On 3-Aug-06, at 13:11, Slover, Kevin wrote:

Scott,

I have actually done some Perl scripting that does this automatically… not sure if that would help, and it is very coarse Perl, but it gets the job done. Example, I had about 500 ascii grids to import. Created a script that would get the list of the files, create the command r.in.arc for each of these, and then a separate script (which I could combine into one) to mosaic the rasters together. Actually, the Perl script created a shell script…

Is this the thought that you were onto?

Kevin Slover

Coastal / GIS Specialist

2872 Woodcock Blvd Suite 230

Atlanta GA 30341

(P) 678-530-0022

(F) 678-530-0044

From: grassuser-bounces@grass.itc.it [mailto:grassuser-bounces@grass.itc.it] On Behalf Of Sampson, David
Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2006 12:58 PM
To: Scott Mitchell
Cc: grassuser@grass.itc.it
Subject: RE: [GRASS-user] run commands sequentially - help please

Scott,

Thanks for the cleanup… now it is not so dirty

BTW I remember Markus showing us a way to save commands you type to the GRASS CLI into a script (think is was X.save where X=something)… this is good if you want to perform it once in geenral and then edit the script for variations. Couldn’t find it off hand in the docs.

I’d be interested to know if you could set and use variables in the approach we used bellow. I never tried. but if you could say use output=$OUTMAP and input=$INMAP and then you can loop for a series of maps. and the input and output are auto generated based on the basefile name.

Can someone provide a sample snippet of how this might look?

Would the for loop be part of the said script, or would you call one script from another passing variables?

This might be good if it is a repeated process you will use ALOT… a type of mild automation.

I notice that in grass 6.1 there is lots of information in the OUTPUT window of what is passed from the command… can you capture this?.. I have not tried any of the icons… if so then this is another way to maybe build your script. I’m likin 6.1 more and more

Just some thoughts.

From: Scott Mitchell [mailto:smitch@mac.com]
Sent: August 3, 2006 12:47
To: Sampson, David
Cc: Tiago Salgueiro; grassuser@grass.itc.it
Subject: Re: [GRASS-user] run commands sequentially - help please

A few elaborations that might help unix-newbies:

On 3-Aug-06, at 12:25, Sampson, David wrote:

Dirty approach,

I used this approach when doing mass imports of files and only had slight variations.

under linux (shoudl work too in cygwin, dos batch would achieve the same thing)

I created a script file (executable text Basicaly) that for you would look like

for a script named runme.sh

#(what ever header you need for your shell)

#!/bin/sh

Putting $!/bin/sh at the top of a script will ensure that the file gets interpreted by whatever the default shell is on the system. Forcing other shells is also possible here, but using just “sh” means you get the default (i.e. as opposed to bash, csh, tcsh, ksh, etc etc).

v.in.asci (string of settings);

note that should be ascii with two i’s

g.region (string of settings);

v.surf.rst (string of settings);

nviz (string of settings);

#end of script

then at the $prompt you need to make the file executable

$chmod 777 runme.sh

Note this makes the file readable, writeable and executable to everyone on the system. If this is just your own private linux or windows box, you probably don’t care, but if someone is doing this on a multi-user system, you might not want other people to be able to edit your files. Using chmod 755 would make it readable and executable to anyone, but only writeable to you, the owner of the file. An alternative, more user-friendly syntax is

chmod u+x runme.sh

which simply says add the execute permission (“+x”) for the User (“u”) that owns runme.sh

then at the $prompt inside a GRASS session you can run the file

$./runme.sh

boom!

notice in the script that each line ends in a ; (semi-colon) this separates each command

I don’t think you need that. It’s C syntax to do that, not needed in a shell script unless you’re concatenating multiple commands on to a single line.

Note also that sometimes options need to be in quotes

eg

v.in.ascii option1=“settings string that may contain escape characters or spaces”;

Alternatively you can capture what you enter at the CLI using

From: grassuser-bounces@grass.itc.it [mailto:grassuser-bounces@grass.itc.it] On Behalf Of Tiago Salgueiro
Sent: August 3, 2006 11:24
To: grassuser@grass.itc.it
Subject: [GRASS-user] run commands sequentially - help please

Hi all,

First of all you should know that I’m a beginner using GRASS.

I want to create a 3D map from a text file with coordinates. I think the commands I will need are the following:

### 1 - v.in.ascii### 2 - g.region### 3 - v.surf.rst### 4 – nviz

But I don’t want to write the commands every time I want to see a map. So I desire to do this sequentially. How can I do that? This way I’ll only need to run one command and the map happens.

Thanks for your help.

Cumprimentos/Best Regards,

Tiago Salgueiro

grassuser mailing list

grassuser@grass.itc.it

http://grass.itc.it/mailman/listinfo/grassuser

8

Scott Mitchell wrote:

> BTW I remember Markus showing us a way to save commands you type to
> the GRASS CLI into a script (think is was X.save where
> X=something).. this is good if you want to perform it once in
> geenral and then edit the script for variations. Couldn't find it
> off hand in the docs.

I suspect that was referring to the d.save command, which generates a
script which will re-create the contents of the current monitor.

If you're using the command line, then you're just using a UNIX
shell, customized to be able to run the GRASS modules. UNIX shells
tend to have their own history mechanisms, so we just take advantage
of that. If I remember correctly, the GRASS startup fires up the
bash shell, and manipulates this to store the history during GRASS
sessions into the mapset directory (in a .bash_history file).

The startup script starts the shell specified by $SHELL (i.e. the
user's default shell). The trick of setting HOME to the mapset
directory is only performed for certain well-known shells (csh/tcsh
and bash), as it needs to know how to modify the shell's startup
scripts to set HOME back to the user's home directory afterwards.

--
Glynn Clements <glynn@gclements.plus.com>