NAME¶

gmtmath - Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) calculator for data tables

SYNOPSIS¶

gmtmath [ -At_f(t).d[+e][+s|w] ] [ -Ccols ] [ -Eeigen ] [ -I ] [ -Nn_col[/t_col] ] [ -Q ] [ -S[f|l] ] [ -Tt_min/t_max/t_inc[+n]|tfile ] [ -V[level] ] [ -bbinary ] [ -dnodata ] [ -eregexp ] [ -fflags ] [ -ggaps ] [ -hheaders ] [ -iflags ] [ -oflags ] [ -sflags ] operand [ operand ] OPERATOR [ operand ] OPERATOR ... = [ outfile ]

Note: No space is allowed between the option flag and the associated arguments.

DESCRIPTION¶

gmtmath will perform operations like add, subtract, multiply, and divide on one or more table data files or constants using Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) syntax (e.g., Hewlett-Packard calculator-style). Arbitrarily complicated expressions may therefore be evaluated; the final result is written to an output file [or standard output]. Data operations are element-by-element, not matrix manipulations (except where noted). Some operators only require one operand (see below). If no data tables are used in the expression then options -T, -N can be set (and optionally -bo to indicate the data type for binary tables). If STDIN is given, the standard input will be read and placed on the stack as if a file with that content had been given on the command line. By default, all columns except the "time" column are operated on, but this can be changed (see -C). Complicated or frequently occurring expressions may be coded as a macro for future use or stored and recalled via named memory locations.

REQUIRED ARGUMENTS¶

OPTIONAL ARGUMENTS¶

OPERATORS¶

Choose among the following 185 operators. "args" are the number of input and output arguments.

SYMBOLS¶

The following symbols have special meaning:

ASCII FORMAT PRECISION¶

The ASCII output formats of numerical data are controlled by parameters in your gmt.conf file. Longitude and latitude are formatted according to FORMAT_GEO_OUT, absolute time is under the control of FORMAT_DATE_OUT and FORMAT_CLOCK_OUT, whereas general floating point values are formatted according to FORMAT_FLOAT_OUT. Be aware that the format in effect can lead to loss of precision in ASCII output, which can lead to various problems downstream. If you find the output is not written with enough precision, consider switching to binary output (-bo if available) or specify more decimals using the FORMAT_FLOAT_OUT setting.

NOTES ON OPERATORS¶

1. The operators PLM and PLMg calculate the associated Legendre polynomial of degree L and order M in x which must satisfy -1 <= x <= +1 and 0 <= M <= L. x, L, and M are the three arguments preceding the operator. PLM is not normalized and includes the Condon-Shortley phase (-1)^M. PLMg is normalized in the way that is most commonly used in geophysics. The C-S phase can be added by using -M as argument. PLM will overflow at higher degrees, whereas PLMg is stable until ultra high degrees (at least 3000).

2. Files that have the same names as some operators, e.g., ADD, SIGN, =, etc. should be identified by prepending the current directory (i.e., ./).

4. All functions expecting a positive radius (e.g., LOG, KEI, etc.) are passed the absolute value of their argument.

6. All derivatives are based on central finite differences, with natural boundary conditions.

STORE, RECALL AND CLEAR¶

You may store intermediate calculations to a named variable that you may recall and place on the stack at a later time. This is useful if you need access to a computed quantity many times in your expression as it will shorten the overall expression and improve readability. To save a result you use the special operator STO@label, where label is the name you choose to give the quantity. To recall the stored result to the stack at a later time, use [RCL]@label, i.e., RCL is optional. To clear memory you may use CLR@label. Note that STO and CLR leave the stack unchanged.

8. The bitwise operators (BITAND, BITLEFT, BITNOT, BITOR, BITRIGHT, BITTEST, and BITXOR) convert a tables's double precision values to unsigned 64-bit ints to perform the bitwise operations. Consequently, the largest whole integer value that can be stored in a double precision value is 2^53 or 9,007,199,254,740,992. Any higher result will be masked to fit in the lower 54 bits. Thus, bit operations are effectively limited to 54 bits. All bitwise operators return NaN if given NaN arguments or bit-settings <= 0.

9. TAPER will interpret its argument to be a width in the same units as the time-axis, but if no time is provided (i.e., plain data tables) then the width is taken to be given in number of rows.

MACROS¶

Users may save their favorite operator combinations as macros via the file gmtmath.macros in their current or user directory. The file may contain any number of macros (one per record); comment lines starting with # are skipped. The format for the macros is name = arg1 arg2 ... arg2 [ : comment] where name is how the macro will be used. When this operator appears on the command line we simply replace it with the listed argument list. No macro may call another macro. As an example, the following macro expects that the time-column contains seafloor ages in Myr and computes the predicted half-space bathymetry:

DEPTH = SQRT 350 MUL 2500 ADD NEG : usage: DEPTH to return half-space seafloor depths

Note: Because geographic or time constants may be present in a macro, it is required that the optional comment flag (:) must be followed by a space. As another example, we show a macro GPSWEEK which determines which GPS week a timestamp belongs to:

GPSWEEK = 1980-01-06T00:00:00 SUB 86400 DIV 7 DIV FLOOR : GPS week without rollover

ACTIVE COLUMN SELECTION¶

When -Ccols is set then any operation, including loading of data from files, will restrict which columns are affected. To avoid unexpected results, note that if you issue a -Ccols option before you load in the data then only those columns will be updated, hence the unspecified columns will be zero. On the other hand, if you load the file first and then issue -Ccols then the unspecified columns will have been loaded but are then ignored until you undo the effect of -C.

EXAMPLES¶

To add two plot dimensions of different units, we can run

length=`gmt math -Q 15c 2i SUB =`

To take the square root of the content of the second data column being piped through gmtmath by process1 and pipe it through a 3rd process, use

process1 | gmt math STDIN SQRT = | process3

To take log10 of the average of 2 data files, use

gmt math file1.d file2.d ADD 0.5 MUL LOG10 = file3.d

Given the file samples.d, which holds seafloor ages in m.y. and seafloor depth in m, use the relation depth(in m) = 2500 + 350 * sqrt (age) to print the depth anomalies:

gmt math samples.d T SQRT 350 MUL 2500 ADD SUB = | lpr

To take the average of columns 1 and 4-6 in the three data sets sizes.1, sizes.2, and sizes.3, use

gmt math -C1,4-6 sizes.1 sizes.2 ADD sizes.3 ADD 3 DIV = ave.d

To take the 1-column data set ages.d and calculate the modal value and assign it to a variable, try

gmt set mode_age = `gmt math -S -T ages.d MODE =`

To evaluate the dilog(x) function for coordinates given in the file t.d:

gmt math -Tt.d T DILOG = dilog.d

To demonstrate the use of stored variables, consider this sum of the first 3 cosine harmonics where we store and repeatedly recall the trigonometric argument (2*pi*T/360):

gmt math -T0/360/1 2 PI MUL 360 DIV T MUL STO@kT COS @kT 2 MUL COS ADD \


            @kT 3 MUL COS ADD = harmonics.d

To use gmtmath as a RPN Hewlett-Packard calculator on scalars (i.e., no input files) and calculate arbitrary expressions, use the -Q option. As an example, we will calculate the value of Kei (((1 + 1.75)/2.2) + cos (60)) and store the result in the shell variable z:

set z = `gmt math -Q 1 1.75 ADD 2.2 DIV 60 COSD ADD KEI =`

To use gmtmath as a general least squares equation solver, imagine that the current table is the augmented matrix [ A | b ] and you want the least squares solution x to the matrix equation A * x = b. The operator LSQFIT does this; it is your job to populate the matrix correctly first. The -A option will facilitate this. Suppose you have a 2-column file ty.d with t and b(t) and you would like to fit a the model y(t) = a + b*t + c*H(t-t0), where H is the Heaviside step function for a given t0 = 1.55. Then, you need a 4-column augmented table loaded with t in column 1 and your observed y(t) in column 3. The calculation becomes

gmt math -N4/1 -Aty.d -C0 1 ADD -C2 1.55 STEPT ADD -Ca LSQFIT = solution.d

Note we use the -C option to select which columns we are working on, then make active all the columns we need (here all of them, with -Ca) before calling LSQFIT. The second and fourth columns (col numbers 1 and 3) are preloaded with t and y(t), respectively, the other columns are zero. If you already have a pre-calculated table with the augmented matrix [ A | b ] in a file (say lsqsys.d), the least squares solution is simply

gmt math -T lsqsys.d LSQFIT = solution.d

Users must be aware that when -C controls which columns are to be active the control extends to placing columns from files as well. Contrast the different result obtained by these very similar commands:

echo 1 2 3 4 | gmt math STDIN -C3 1 ADD =
1    2    3    5

versus

echo 1 2 3 4 | gmt math -C3 STDIN 1 ADD =
0    0    0    5

REFERENCES¶

Abramowitz, M., and I. A. Stegun, 1964, Handbook of Mathematical Functions, Applied Mathematics Series, vol. 55, Dover, New York.

Holmes, S. A., and W. E. Featherstone, 2002, A unified approach to the Clenshaw summation and the recursive computation of very high degree and order normalized associated Legendre functions. Journal of Geodesy, 76, 279-299.

Press, W. H., S. A. Teukolsky, W. T. Vetterling, and B. P. Flannery, 1992, Numerical Recipes, 2nd edition, Cambridge Univ., New York.

Spanier, J., and K. B. Oldman, 1987, An Atlas of Functions, Hemisphere Publishing Corp.

SEE ALSO¶

gmt, grdmath

COPYRIGHT¶

2019, P. Wessel, W. H. F. Smith, R. Scharroo, J. Luis, and F. Wobbe