Simon Cox wrote on 3/28/96:
Has anyone written a command v.what? It should give the
category/attribute of -a the area within which a point falls,
or -l the nearest line/area-edge to the chosen point.
ie a non-interactive version of d.what.vect.
If you query a layer containing polygons; say for example a layer of the
township, range, section, or land grant names; using d.what.vect, you get
no only the category but the size of the polygon.
Is that what you are looking for or did I miss something? 
r.what already exists in the grass distribution.
I have hacked together s.what based on some bits passed on to
me by Sue Huse at Berkeley. Only v.what is missing!
Needed to make GRASSLinks a bit more functional.
The GRASSLinks sounds like a really great user interface. Does it
incorporate most of the functionality you can acheive with GRASS at the
command line?
Talk to you later.
Louis Clarke U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
lclarke@alb-co-r.swa.usace.army.mil Albuquerque District
voice (505)342-3281 Regulatory Branch
fax (505)342-3498 http://www.swa-wc.usace.army.mil/reg/