m.measure(1grass)

💖 m.measure — the manual, but make it cute 💖

okay bestie, so this is m.measure from the GRASS User's Manual, and it is literally the tool that measures the lengths and areas of features. that's it. that's the job. icon behavior.

KEYWORDS: miscellaneous, measurement, distance, area 🎀

---

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

m.measure
m.measure --help
m.measure [-g] coordinates=east,north[,east,north,...]  [units=string]
format=name  [--help]  [--verbose]  [--quiet]  [--ui]

---

🌸 FLAGS 🌸

• -g — Shell script style [deprecated]. this one is on its way out, bestie 💀 it's deprecated and will be removed in a future release. use format=shell instead. no cap.
• --help — shows you the usage summary. your lil cheat sheet 🫶
• --verbose — verbose module output, aka it tells you everything it's doing
• --quiet — quiet module output, aka it shuts up and just works
• --ui — forces the GUI dialog to launch, for when you want the pretty buttons ✨

---

🦋 PARAMETERS 🦋

• coordinates=east,north[,east,north,...] [required] — the coordinates. yes queen you actually have to give it these, it's required.
• units=string — the units. default is project map units. your options are: miles, feet, meters, kilometers, acres, hectares 🌈
• format=name [required] — output format. default is plain. your options:
  • plain — Plain text output
  • shell — shell script style output
  • json — JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)

---

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

m.measure gives you a way to measure the lengths and areas of lines and polygons. and the area tea? you can state areas in acres, hectares, square miles, square feet, square meters and square kilometers. versatility, she ate. 👑

---

🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

here's a distance example in a latitude-longitude coordinate reference system (on great circle, i.e. an orthodrome):

Bonn_DE="7.09549,50.73438"
Philadelphia_US="-75.16379,39.95233"
m.measure coordinates="$Bonn_DE,$Philadelphia_US" units=kilometers
Length:  6217.916452 kilometers
Visualization (with d.geodesic) of m.measure distance example

(that visualization line is about using d.geodesic to see that distance example, iykyk 🧚)

now for the North Carolina sample dataset moment — here are four points describing a square of 1000m side length:

m.measure units=meters \
  coordinates=922000,2106000,923000,2106000,923000,2107000,922000,2107000
Length:  3000.000000 meters
Area:    1000000.000000 square meters
# script style output:
m.measure -g units=hectares \
  coordinates=922000,2106000,923000,2106000,923000,2107000,922000,2107000
units=meters,square meters
length=3000.000000
area=1000000.000000

look at those numbers pop off 🔥

---

🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

• d.geodesic

---

👑 AUTHORS 👑

• Glynn Clements
• Some updates by Martin Landa, CTU in Prague, Czech Republic
• Derived from d.measure by James Westervelt, Michael Shapiro, U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratory

the origin story is giving collaborative excellence fr fr 💜

---

🌈 SOURCE CODE 🌈

Available at: m.measure source code (history)

Latest change: Monday Nov 03 07:16:48 2025 in commit: c96796774942e46bbababcd652d3986d4e295665

Main index | Miscellaneous index | Topics index | Keywords index | Graphical index | Full index

© 2003-2026 GRASS Development Team, GRASS 8.5.0 Reference Manual

---

aaaand that's the whole page bestie, every single flag, unit, format and commit hash preserved, periodt 💅

this was m.measure(1grass) from GRASS 8.5.0 — go forth and measure some areas, you main character 🦋✨