--help

List and description of GMT modules.

--show-cores

Show number of available cores.

--show-bindir

Show directory of executables and exit.

--show-datadir

Show data directory/ies and exit.

--show-modules

List module names on stdout and exit.

--show-plugindir

Show plugin directory and exit.

--show-sharedir

Show share directory and exit.

--version

Print version and exit.

=

Check if that module exist and if so the program will exit with status of 0; otherwise the status of exit will be non-zero.

-B[p|s]parameters

Set map Frame and Axes parameters. The Frame parameters are specified by

-B[axes][+b][+gfill][+n][+olon/lat][+ttitle]

where axes selects which axes to plot. By default, all 4 map boundaries (or plot axes) are plotted (named W, E, S, N). To customize, append the codes for those you want (e.g., WSn). Upper case means plot and annotate while lower case just plots the specified axes. If a 3-D basemap is selected with -p and -Jz, append Z or z to control the appearance of the vertical axis. By default a single vertical axes will be plotted at the most suitable map corner. Override the default by appending any combination of corner ids 1234, where 1 represents the lower left corner and the order goes counter-clockwise. Append +b to draw the outline of the 3-D cube defined by -R; this modifier is also needed to display gridlines in the x-z, y-z planes. Note that for 3-D views the title, if given, will be suppressed. You can paint the interior of the canvas with +gfill. Append +n to have no frame and annotations at all [Default is controlled by the codes]. Optionally append +oplon/plat to draw oblique gridlines about specified pole [regular gridlines]. Ignored if gridlines are not requested (below) and disallowed for the oblique Mercator projection. To add a plot title (+ttitle). The Frame setting is optional but can be invoked once to override the above defaults.

The Axes parameters are specified by

-B[p|s][x|y|z]intervals[+l|Llabel][+pprefix][+uunit]

but you may also split this into two separate invocations for clarity, i.e.,

• -B[p|s][x|y|z][+l|Llabel][+pprefix][+uunit]
• -B[p|s][x|y|z]intervals

  The first optional flag following -B selects p (rimary) [Default] or s (econdary) axes information (mostly used for time axes annotations). The [x|y|z] flags specify which axes you are providing information for. If none are given then we default to xy. If you wish to give different annotation intervals or labels for the various axes then you must repeat the B option for each axis (If a 3-D basemap is selected with -p and -Jz, use -Bz to give settings for the vertical axis.). To add a label to an axis, just append +llabel (Cartesian projections only). Use +L to force a horizontal label for y-axes (useful for very short labels). If the axis annotation should have a leading text prefix (e.g., dollar sign for those plots of your net worth) you can append +pprefix. For geographic maps the addition of degree symbols, etc. is automatic (and controlled by the GMT default setting FORMAT_GEO_MAP). However, for other plots you can add specific units by adding +uunit. If any of these text strings contain spaces or special characters you will need to enclose them in quotes. The intervals specification is a concatenated string made up of substrings of the form

  [a|f|g]stride[+-phase][u].

  The leading a is used to specify the annotation and major tick spacing [Default], f for minor tick spacing, and g for gridline spacing. stride is the desired stride interval. The optional phase shifts the annotation interval by that amount (positive or negative). The optional unit indicates the unit of the stride and can be any of

Note for geographic axes m and s instead mean arc minutes and arc seconds. All entities that are language-specific are under control by GMT_LANGUAGE. Alternatively, for linear maps, we can omit stride, thus setting xinfo, yinfo, or zinfo to a plots annotations at automatically determined intervals,

For custom annotations and intervals, let intervals be given as cintfile, where intfile contains any number of records with coord type [label]. Here, type is one or more letters from a|i, f, and g. For a|i you must supply a label that will be plotted at the coord location. For non-geographical projections: Give negative scale (in -Jx) or axis length (in -JX) to change the direction of increasing coordinates (i.e., to make the y-axis positive down). For log10 axes: Annotations can be specified in one of three ways:

For power axes: Annotations can be specified in one of two ways:

These GMT parameters can affect the appearance of the map boundary: MAP_ANNOT_MIN_ANGLE, MAP_ANNOT_MIN_SPACING, FONT_ANNOT_PRIMARY, FONT_ANNOT_SECONDARY, MAP_ANNOT_OFFSET_PRIMARY, MAP_ANNOT_OFFSET_SECONDARY, MAP_ANNOT_ORTHO, MAP_FRAME_AXES, MAP_DEFAULT_PEN, MAP_FRAME_TYPE, FORMAT_GEO_MAP, MAP_FRAME_PEN, MAP_FRAME_WIDTH, MAP_GRID_CROSS_SIZE_PRIMARY, MAP_GRID_PEN_PRIMARY, MAP_GRID_CROSS_SIZE_SECONDARY, MAP_GRID_PEN_SECONDARY, FONT_TITLE, FONT_LABEL, MAP_LINE_STEP, MAP_ANNOT_OBLIQUE, FORMAT_CLOCK_MAP, FORMAT_DATE_MAP, FORMAT_TIME_PRIMARY_MAP, FORMAT_TIME_SECONDARY_MAP, GMT_LANGUAGE, TIME_WEEK_START, MAP_TICK_LENGTH_PRIMARY, and MAP_TICK_PEN_PRIMARY; see the gmt.conf man page for details.

-Jz|Zparameters

Set z-axis scaling; same syntax as -Jx.

-K

More PostScript code will be appended later [Default terminates the plot system]. Required for all but the last plot command when building multi-layer plots.

-O

Selects Overlay plot mode [Default initializes a new plot system]. Required for all but the first plot command when building multi-layer plots.

-P

Select "Portrait" plot orientation [Default is "Landscape"; see gmt.conf or gmtset to change the PS_PAGE_ORIENTATION parameter, or supply --PS_PAGE_ORIENTATION=orientation on the command line].

-Rxmin/xmax/ymin/ymax[+r][+uunit]

xmin, xmax, ymin, and ymax specify the region of interest. For geographic regions, these limits correspond to west, east, south, and north and you may specify them in decimal degrees or in [+|-]dd:mm[:ss.xxx][W|E|S|N] format. Append +r if lower left and upper right map coordinates are given instead of west/east/south/north. The two shorthands -Rg and -Rd stand for global domain (0/360 and -180/+180 in longitude respectively, with -90/+90 in latitude). Alternatively for grid creation, give -Rcodex0/y0/nx/ny, where code is a 2-character combination of L, C, R (for left, center, or right) and T, M, B for top, middle, or bottom. e.g., BL for lower left. This indicates which point on a rectangular region the x0/y0 coordinate refers to, and the grid dimensions nx and ny with grid spacings via -I is used to create the corresponding region. Alternatively, specify the name of an existing grid file and the -R settings (and grid spacing, if applicable) are copied from the grid. When -R is used without any further arguments, the values from the last use of -R in a previous GMT command will be used. For calendar time coordinates you may either give (a) relative time (relative to the selected TIME_EPOCH and in the selected TIME_UNIT; append t to -JX|x), or (b) absolute time of the form [date]T[clock] (append T to -JX|x). At least one of date and clock must be present; the T is always required. The date string must be of the form [-]yyyy[-mm[-dd]] (Gregorian calendar) or yyyy[-Www[-d]] (ISO week calendar), while the clock string must be of the form hh:mm:ss[.xxx]. The use of delimiters and their type and positions must be exactly as indicated (however, input, output and plot formats are customizable; see gmt.conf). You can also use Cartesian projected coordinates compatible with the chosen projection. Append the length unit via the +u modifier, (e.g., -R-200/200/-300/300+uk for a 400 by 600 km rectangular area centered on the projection center (0, 0). These coordinates are internally converted to the corresponding geographic (longitude, latitude) coordinates for the lower left and upper right corners. This form is convenient when you want to specify a region directly in the projected units (e.g., UTM meters).

-U[[just]/dx/dy/][c|label]

Draw Unix System time stamp on plot. By adding [just]/dx/dy/, the user may specify the justification of the stamp and where the stamp should fall on the page relative to lower left corner of the plot. For example, BL/0/0 will align the lower left corner of the time stamp with the lower left corner of the plot [LL]. Optionally, append a label, or c (which will plot the command string.). The GMT parameters MAP_LOGO, MAP_LOGO_POS, and FORMAT_TIME_STAMP can affect the appearance; see the gmt.conf man page for details. The time string will be in the locale set by the environment variable TZ (generally local time).

-V[level]

Select verbose mode, which will send progress reports to stderr. Choose among 6 levels of verbosity; each level adds more messages: q - Complete silence, not even fatal error messages are produced. n - Normal verbosity: produce only fatal error messages. c - Produce also compatibility warnings (same as when -V is omitted). v - Produce also warnings and progress messages (same as -V only). l - Produce also detailed progress messages. d - Produce also debugging messages.

-Y[a|c|f|r][y-shift[u]]

Shift plot origin relative to the current origin by (x-shift,y-shift) and optionally append the length unit (c, i, or p). You can prepend a to shift the origin back to the original position after plotting, prepend c to center the plot on the center of the paper (optionally add shift), prepend f to shift the origin relative to the fixed lower left corner of the page, or prepend r [Default] to move the origin relative to its current location. If -O is used then the default (x-shift,y-shift) is (r0), otherwise it is (r1i). When -X or -Y are used without any further arguments, the values from the last use of that option in a previous GMT command will be used.

-a[col=]name[...]

Control how aspatial data are handled in GMT during input and output. Reading OGR/GMT-formatted files: To assign certain aspatial data items to GMT data columns, give one or more comma-separated associations col=name, where name is the name of an aspatial attribute field in a OGR/GMT file and whose value we wish to use as data input for column col. In addition, to assign an aspatial value to non-column data, you may specify col as D for distance, G for fill, I for ID, L for label, T for text, W for pen, and Z for value [e.g., used to look up color via a CPT]. If you skip the leading "col=" in the argument then we supply (and automatically increment) a column value starting at 2. Writing OGR/GMT-formatted files: To write OGR/GMT-formatted files, give one or more comma-separated associations col=name[:type], with an optional data type from DOUBLE, FLOAT, INTEGER, CHAR, STRING, DATETIME, or LOGICAL [DOUBLE]. To extract information from GMT multisegment headers encoded in the -Ddistance, -Gfill, -IID, -Llabel, -Ttext, -Wpen, or -Zvalue settings, specify COL as D, G, I, L, T, W or Z, respectively; type will be set automatically. Finally, you must append +ggeometry, where geometry is either POINT, LINE, or POLY. Optionally, prepend M for multi-versions of these geometries. To force the clipping of features crossing the Dateline, use upper-case +G instead. See GMT Appendix Q for details of the OGR/GMT file format.

-bi[ncols][type][w][+L|+B]

Select native binary input. Here, ncols is the number of data columns of given type, which must be one of c (int8_t, aka char), u (uint8_t, aka unsigned char), h (int16_t, 2-byte signed int), H (uint16_t, 2-byte unsigned int), i (int32_t, 4-byte signed int), I ((capital i) uint32_t, 4-byte unsigned int), l ((lower case el) int64_t, 8-byte signed int), L (uint64_t, 8-byte unsigned int), f (4-byte single-precision float), and d (8-byte double-precision float). In addition, use x to skip ncols bytes anywhere in the record. For records with mixed types, simply append additional comma-separated combinations of ncolst. Append w to any item to force byte-swapping. Alternatively, append +L|B to indicate that the entire data file should be read as little- or big-endian, respectively. The cumulative number of ncols may exceed the columns actually needed by the program. If ncols is not specified we assume that type applies to all columns and that ncols is implied by the expectation of the program. If the input file is netCDF, no -b is needed; simply append ?var1/var2/... to the filename to specify the variables to be read.

-bo[ncols][type][w][+L|+B]

Select native binary output. Here, ncols is the actual number of data columns of type t, which must be one of c, u, h, H, i, I (capital i), l (lower case elle), L, f, and d (see -bi). For a mixed-type output record, append additional comma-separated combinations of ncols/t. Append w to any item to force byte-swapping or +L|B for byte-swapping of the entire record. If ncols is not specified we assume that t applies to all columns and that ncols is implied by the default output of the program. Note: NetCDF file output is not supported.

-d[i|o]nodata

Control how user-coded missing data values are translated to official NaN values in GMT. For input data we replace any value that equals nodata with NaN. For output data we replace any NaN with the chosen nodata value. Use -di or -do to only affect input or output.

-dinodata

Examine all input columns and if any item equals nodata we interpret this value as a missing data item and substitute the value NaN.

-donodata

Examine all output columns and if any item equals NAN we substitute it with the chosen missing data value nodata.

-e[~]"pattern" | -e[~]/regexp/[i]

Only accept ASCII data records that contains the specified pattern. To reverse the search, i.e., to only accept data record that do not contain the specified pattern, use -e~. Should your pattern happen to start with ~ you need to escape this character with a backslash [Default accepts all data records]. For matching data records against extended regular expressions enclose the expression in slashes. Append i for case-insensitive matching. For a list of such patterns, give +ffile with one pattern per line. To give a single pattern starting with +f, escape it with a backslash.

-f[i|o]colinfo

Specify the data types of input and/or output columns (time or geographical data). Specify i or o to make this apply only to input or output [Default applies to both]. Give one or more columns (or column ranges) separated by commas, or use -f multiple times (column ranges must be given in the format start[:inc ]:stop, where inc defaults to 1 if not specified). Append T (absolute calendar time), t (relative time in chosen TIME_UNIT since TIME_EPOCH), x (longitude), y (latitude), p[unit] (projected x,y map coordinates in given unit [meter]) or f (floating point) to each column or column range item. Shorthands -f[i|o]g means -f[i|o]0x,1y (geographic coordinates) and -f[i|o]c means -f[i|o]0-1f (Cartesian coordinates)

-g[a]x|y|d|X|Y|D|[col]z[+|-]gap[u]

Examine the spacing between consecutive data points in order to impose breaks in the line. Append x|X or y|Y to define a gap when there is a large enough change in the x or y coordinates, respectively, or d|D for distance gaps; use upper case to calculate gaps from projected coordinates. For gap-testing on other columns use [col]z; if col is not prepended the it defaults to 2 (i.e., 3rd column). Append [+|-]gap and optionally a unit u. Regarding optional signs: -ve means previous minus current column value must exceed gap to be a gap, +ve means current minus previous column value must exceed gap, and no sign means the absolute value of the difference must exceed gap. For geographic data (x|y|d), the unit u may be arc degree, minute, or second, or meter [Default], foot, kilometer, Mile, nautical mile, or survey foot. For projected data (X|Y|D), choose from inch, centimeter, or point [Default unit set by PROJ_LENGTH_UNIT]. Note: For x|y|z with time data the unit is instead controlled by TIME_UNIT. Repeat the option to specify multiple criteria, of which any can be met to produce a line break. Issue an additional -ga to indicate that all criteria must be met instead.

-h[i|o][n][+c][+d][+rremark][+ttitle]

Primary input file(s) has header record(s). If used, the default number of header records is IO_N_HEADER_RECS [1]. Use -hi if only the primary input data should have header records [Default will write out header records if the input data have them]. Blank lines and lines starting with # are always skipped. For output you may request additional headers to be written via the option modifiers, and use +d to remove existing header records. Append +c to issue a header comment with column names to the output [none]. Append +r to add a remark comment to the output [none]. Append +t to add a title comment to the output [none]. These optional strings may contain n to indicate line-breaks). If used with native binary data we interpret n to instead mean the number of bytes to skip on input or pad on output.

-icols[+l][+sscale][+ooffset][,...]

Select specific data columns for primary input, in arbitrary order. Columns not listed will be skipped. Give individual columns (or column ranges in the format start[:inc ]:stop, where inc defaults to 1 if not specified) separated by commas [Default reads all columns in order, starting with the first column (0)]. Columns may be repeated. To each column, optionally add any of the following: +l takes log10 of the input values first; +sscale, subsequently multiplies by a given scale factor [1]; +ooffset, finally adds a given offset [0].

-n[b|c|l|n][+a][+bBC][+c][+tthreshold]

Select grid interpolation mode by adding b for B-spline smoothing, c for bicubic interpolation, l for bilinear interpolation, or n for nearest-neighbor value (for example to plot categorical data). Optionally, append +a to switch off antialiasing (where supported). Append +bBC to override the boundary conditions used, adding g for geographic, p for periodic, or n for natural boundary conditions. For the latter two you may append x or y to specify just one direction, otherwise both are assumed. Append +c to clip the interpolated grid to input z-min/max [Default may exceed limits]. Append +tthreshold to control how close to nodes with NaNs the interpolation will go. A threshold of 1.0 requires all (4 or 16) nodes involved in interpolation to be non-NaN. 0.5 will interpolate about half way from a non-NaN value; 0.1 will go about 90% of the way, etc. [Default is bicubic interpolation with antialiasing and a threshold of 0.5, using geographic (if grid is known to be geographic) or natural boundary conditions].

-ocols[,...]

Select specific data columns for primary output, in arbitrary order. Columns not listed will be skipped. Give columns (or column ranges in the format start[:inc ]:stop, where inc defaults to 1 if not specified) separated by commas. Columns may be repeated. [Default writes all columns in order].

-p[x|y|z]azim[/elev[/zlevel]][+wlon0/lat0[/z0]][+vx0/y0]

Selects perspective view and sets the azimuth and elevation of the viewpoint [180/90]. When -p is used in consort with -Jz or -JZ, a third value can be appended which indicates at which z-level all 2D material, like the plot frame, is plotted (in perspective). [Default is at the bottom of the z-axis]. Use -px or -py to plot against the "wall" x = level or y = level (default is on the horizontal plane, which is the same as using -pz). For frames used for animation, you may want to append + to fix the center of your data domain (or specify a particular world coordinate point with +wlon0/lat[/z]) which will project to the center of your page size (or specify the coordinates of the projected view point with +vx0/y0. When -p is used without any further arguments, the values from the last use of -p in a previous GMT command will be used. Alternatively, you can perform a simple rotation about the z-axis by just giving the rotation angle. Optionally, use +v or +w to select another axis location than the plot origin.

-r

Force pixel node registration [Default is gridline registration]. (Node registrations are defined in Section grid-registration of the GMT Technical Reference and Cookbook.)

-s[cols][a|r]

Suppress output for records whose z-value equals NaN [Default outputs all records]. Append a to skip records where at least one field equal NaN. Append r to reverse the suppression, i.e., only output the records whose z-value equals NaN. Alternatively, indicate a comma-separated list of all columns or column ranges to consider for this NaN test (Column ranges must be given in the format start[:inc ]:stop, where inc defaults to 1 if not specified).

-t[transp]

Set PDF transparency level for an overlay, in 0-100 percent range. [Default is 0, i.e., opaque].

-x[[-]n]

Limit the number of cores to be used in any OpenMP-enabled multi-threaded algorithms. By default we try to use all available cores. Append n to only use n cores (if too large it will be truncated to the maximum cores available). Finally, give a negative n to select (all - n) cores (or at least 1 if n equals or exceeds all). The -x option is only available to GMT modules compiled with OpenMP support.

-:[i|o]

Swap 1st and 2nd column on input and/or output [Default is no swapping]. Append i to select input only or o to select output only. [Default affects both]. This option is typically used to handle (latitude, longitude) files; see also -icols[l][sscale][ooffset][,...].

-^ or just -

Print a short message about the syntax of the command, then exits (NOTE: on Windows just use -).

-+ or just +

Print an extensive usage (help) message, including the explanation of any module-specific option (but not the GMT common options), then exits.

-? or no arguments

Print a complete usage (help) message, including the explanation of all options, then exits.