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HOME > Monitoring_and_Data > Oceanic and Atmospheric Data > Reanalysis: Atmospheric Data > wgrib2-set_regex

wgrib2: -set_regex

Introduction

NOTE: the -set_regex option MUST preceed the -match/-not/-if/-not_if options. All these options are "setup" options and the processing the the -set_regex must occur before the processing of the -match and other regex options.

Grib files can have hundreds of records and most people only want a few of the records. Rather than processing everything, you can select the specific records to process by the -match, -not, -if and -not if options. These options take an extended POSIX regular expression (regex) as their sole arguement. These options check the regex with the "match inventory" (see -match_inv). Some examples are

  wgrib2 input.grb -match ':UGRD:200 mb:' -grib u.grb
  wgrib2 input.grb -match ':(UGRD|VGRD|TMP):200 mb:' -grib uvt.grb

Now regex are powerful but can produce some surprises. For example, you want the 19th (positive perturbation) ensemble member which is denoted by 'ENS=+19' in the match inventory. You try,

  wgrib2 input.grb -match ':ENS=+19:' -grib e19.grb

Surprise, the above line does not work. The plus sign is a regex metacharacter indicating that the previous character would be matched 1 or more times. Consequently the plus sign wouldn't be matched. To get the above match to work, you can quote the plus sign with a backslash.

  wgrib2 input.grb -match ':ENS=\+19:' -grib e19.grb

Alternatively you could change the regex match into "pattern" mode. In pattern mode, the regex metacharacters are considered to be ordinary characters.

  wgrib2 -set_regex 1 input.grb -match ':ENS=+19:' -grib e19.grb

You can consider "-set_regex 0" which is the default to be the egrep mode and the "set_regex 1" to be the grep mode. There is a third mode in which you need to quote the metacharacters. Here is an example that gets the 19th, 20th and 21th ensemble members. This mode was added because it is easier to remember to quote the '(|)' metacharacters than to quote the ordinary characters correspond to metacharacters.

  wgrib2 -set_regex 2 input.grb -match ':ENS=+\(19\|20\|21\):' -grib e19_20_21.grb

Usage

-set_regex X              X=0, 1, 2

Example

$ wgrib2 gep.grb -match ':UGRD:200 mb:' -match ':ENS=+19:'
        (no output)
$ wgrib2 gep.grb -set_regex 1 -match ':UGRD:200 mb:' -match ':ENS=+19:'
4.1:86046:d=2009060500:UGRD:200 mb:180 hour fcst:ENS=+19