v.what(1grass)

✨ NAME ✨

okay bestie, welcome to v.what from the GRASS User's Manual — she's the module that queries a vector map at given locations 🎯

🏷️ KEYWORDS 🏷️

vector, querying, position — iykyk 💅

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📜 SYNOPSIS 📜

v.what
v.what --help
v.what [-aidgjm] map=name[,name,...]  [layer=string[,string,...]]
[type=string[,string,...]]  coordinates=east,north  [distance=float]
[columns=name[,name,...]]   [format=name]   [--help]  [--verbose]
[--quiet]  [--ui]

🚩 Flags 🚩

• -a — print attribute information ✨
• -i — print attribute database connection information 🔌
• -d — print topological information (debugging). Like, it prints internal information for topology debugging 🧠
• -g — print the stats in shell script style, but babe… [deprecated] 😭 This flag is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Use format=shell instead, fr fr.
• -j — print the stats in JSON, also [deprecated] 💀 This flag is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Use format=json instead.
• -m — print multiple features for each map if they meet the criteria. For JSON, this places features under a "features" key 👀
• --help — print usage summary 🫶
• --verbose — verbose module output 📢
• --quiet — quiet module output 🤫
• --ui — force launching GUI dialog 🖥️

🎛️ Parameters 🎛️

• map=name[,name,...] [required] — name of vector map(s) 🗺️
• layer=string[,string,...] — layer number or name ('-1' for all layers). A single vector map can be connected to multiple database tables, and this number determines which table to use. When used with direct OGR access, this is the layer name. Default: -1
• type=string[,string,...] — input feature type. Options: point, line, boundary, centroid, area, face, kernel. Default: point,line,area,face
• coordinates=east,north [required] — coordinates for query. Use '-' for standard input ⌨️
• distance=float — query threshold distance. Default: 0
• columns=name[,name,...] — name of attribute column(s). Default: all columns
• format=name — output format. Options: plain, shell, json
  • plain: plain text output
  • shell: shell script style output
  • json: JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

v.what outputs the category number value(s) associated with user-specified location(s) in user-specified vector map layer(s) 🎀

This module was derived from the d.what.vect module by removing all interactive code and modification of the output for easy parsing. And using the -g flag generates script-style output which is easily parsable 🧚

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🌈 EXAMPLE 🌈

North Carolina sample dataset example, bestie, let's go:

Query polygon at given position:

v.what zipcodes_wake coordinates=637502.25,221744.25

Find closest hospital to given position within given distance (search radius):

v.what hospitals coordinates=542690.4,204802.7 distance=2000000

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

d.what.rast, d.what.vect, v.rast.stats, v.vect.stats, v.what.rast, v.what.rast3, v.what.vect

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Trevor Wiens Edmonton, Alberta, Canada 🇨🇦

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🔥 SOURCE CODE 🔥

Available at: v.what source code (history)

Latest change: Sunday Oct 19 06:41:19 2025 in commit: 3852c52a6ee5ed16ab7c0d2129951ff2d4badb8b

Main index | Vector index | Topics index | Keywords index | Graphical index | Full index

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

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and that's the whole page, no cap 💅 this was v.what(1grass) out of the GRASS User's Manual, running under GRASS 8.5.0 — mwah, slay, periodt 🫶✨