Synopsis

mseed2ascii  [-v|--verbose] [--include-pattern=PATTERN]…​
             [--select-station=STATION]…​ [--select-channel=CHANNEL]…​
             [--output-dir=DIRECTORY [--force-overwrite] [--force-concat]]
             [--format=FORMAT]
             [file | directory]…​
mseed2ascii  [-h|--help] [--version] [--sysinfo]

Description

Mseed2ascii reads from one or more files (or standard input) and converts each miniSEED record in the input to ASCII text format. If a directory is given instead, mseed2ascii searches recursively for input files inside the directory. The search can be restricted to contain only files with a name also matched by a pattern given via one or more --include-pattern options.

The conversion result is written to standard output (i.e. console) or saved in an output directory (use option --output-dir). Different predefined output variants (data and/or header, …​) are available can be selected using the --format option.

Options

The program pretty much follows expected Unix command line syntax. Some command line options have two variants, one long and an additional short one (for convenience). These are shown below, separated by commas. However, most options only have a long variant. The ‘=’ for options that take a parameter is required and can not be replaced by a whitespace.

-h, --help

Print a brief summary of all available command line options and exit.

--version

Print the mseed2ascii release information and exit.

--sysinfo

Provide some basic system information and exit.

-v, --verbose

This option increases the amount of information given to the user during program execution. By default, (i.e. without this option) mseed2ascii only reports warnings and errors. (See the diagnostics section below.)

--include-pattern=PATTERN

Only process files whose filename matches the given PATTERN. Files with a name not matching the search PATTERN will be ignored. This option is quite useful to speed up recursive searches through large subdirectory trees and can be used more than once in the same command line.

You can use the two wild card characters (* and ?) when specifying a PATTERN (e.g. *.pri?). Or alternatively, you can also use a predefined filter called GIPP that can be used to exclude all files not following the usual GIPP naming convention for miniSEED files recorded by Earth Data loggers (e.g. message logging or status files, see examples section below).

The search PATTERN is only applied to the filename part and not to the full pathname of a file.
--select-station=STATION

Only process miniSEED records with a matching STATION identifier. Records that do not match the STATION expression are ignored/skipped.

This command line option understands the two wild card character * and ? and can be used more than once in a command line.

--select-channel=CHANNEL

Only process miniSEED records with a matching CHANNEL identifier. Records that do not match the CHANNEL expression are ignored/skipped.

This command line option understands the two wild card character * and ? and can be used more than once in a command line.

--output-dir=DIRECTORY

Save the resulting ASCII text files to this DIRECTORY. The directory must already exist and be writable! Already existing files in that directory will not be overwritten unless the option --force-overwrite is used as well.

--force-overwrite

If this option is used, already existing files in the output directory will be overwritten without mercy!

The default behavior however is not to overwrite already existing files. Instead, a new file is created with an additional number in between filename and extension.

--force-concat

Concatenate the ASCII text output creating as few new files as possible. This means that a new output file is only started when there is a (data) discontinuity in the miniSEED input. Without discontinuity the converted data is simply appended to the currently used output file.

By default, however, a separate new output file is created for every single miniSEED input file.

--format=FORMAT

Select one of the predefined output formats:

HEADER

Write out the miniSEED header information for each record.

DATA

Write only the sample values contained in the miniSEED records.

ALL

The combination of the HEADER and DATA format. (This is also the default output format.)

GMT

Write the sample values of each miniSEED record in a two-column ASCII format that can be directly used as input to the psxy command. (The psxy command is part of the Generic Mapping Tools, GMT.)

Environment

The following environment variables can optionally be used to influence the behavior of the GIPPtool utilities.

GIPPTOOLS_HOME

This environment variable is used to find the location of the GIPPtools installation directory. In particular, the Java class files that make up the GIPPtools are expected to be in the java subdirectory of GIPPTOOLS_HOME.

GIPPTOOLS_JAVA

The utilities of the GIPPtools are written in the programming language Java and consequently need a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) to execute. Use this variable to specify the location of the JRE which should be used.

GIPPTOOLS_OPTS

You can use this environment variable for additional fine-tuning of the Java runtime environment. This is typically used to set the Java heap size available to GIPPtool programs.

It is usually not necessary to define any of those variables as suitable values should be selected automatically. However, if the automatic detection build into the start script fails, or you need to choose between different GIPPtool or Java runtime releases installed on your computer, these environment variables might become quite helpful to troubleshoot the situation.

Diagnostics

Occasionally, the mseed2ascii utility will produce user feedback. In general, user messages are classified as INFO, WARNING or ERROR. The INFO messages are only displayed when the --verbose command line option is used. They usually report about the progress of the program run, give statistical information or write a final summary.

More important are WARNING messages. In general, they warn about (possible) issues that may influence the outcome. Although the program will continue with execution, you certainly should check the results carefully. You might not have gotten what you (thought you) asked for. Finally, ERROR messages inform about problems that can not be resolved automatically. Program execution usually stops and the user must fix the cause of the error first.

Exit codes

Use the following program exit codes when calling mseed2ascii from scripts or other programs to see if mseed2ascii finished successfully. Any non-zero code indicates an ERROR!

0

Success.

64

Command line syntax or usage error.

65

Data format error. (The input was not a valid miniSEED file.)

66

An input file did not exist or was not readable.

70

Error in internal program logic.

74

I/O error.

99

Other, unspecified errors.

Examples

  1. To see an ASCII representation of a single file you could use one of the following variations:

    mseed2ascii input.mseed
    mseed2ascii input.mseed | more
    cat input.mseed | mseed2ascii > output.txt

    The first command will write header and data of the miniSEED records to the console. The second will use the pager program more to display the result. And the last variant will save the content of the input.mseed file to the output.txt file.

  2. You have a multiplexed miniSEED file with logging information embedded in a special LOG recording channel. The logging data is stored as ASCII encoded content inside "normal" miniSEED records. To extract the logfile use e.g.:

    mseed2ascii --format=DATA --select-channel=LOG input.mseed > logfile.txt

    Here, output format DATA is selected so that information about the miniSEED record is not intermixed with the logging file. In addition, the LOG recording channel is picked for processing with the --select-channel option.

Files

$GIPPTOOLS_HOME/bin/mseed2ascii

The mseed2ascii "program". Usually just a copy of or symbolic link pointing to the standard GIPPtools start script.

$GIPPTOOLS_HOME/bin/gipptools

The GIPPtools start script. Almost all utilities of the GIPPtools package are started from this shell script.

See also

gipptools(1), cube2ascii(1), cube2mseed(1), cube2segy(1), cubeevent(1), cubeinfo(1), mseed2mseed(1), mseed2pdas(1), mseed2segy(1), mseedcut(1), mseedinfo(1), mseedrecover(1), mseedrename(1)

Bugs and caveats

None so far.