[GRASSLIST:10675] Re: r.mapcalc problem

[Hamish]

> > > Wow. I think that some of these little snippets of wisdom should
> > > find their way into some of the relevant documentation... just a
> > > matter of finding the time...

Indeed a lot (many/most) of these little idiosyncrasies are not GRASS or
r.mapcalc specific. The same rules apply to the handling of numbers by
many programming languages and scientific software. Programs like Excel
will happily ignore null values, but this isn't quite correct
mathematically. Many hardcore programs (like Matlab) insist on doing
the "right thing" and will act the same way as GRASS. So it is hard to
say which bit of documentation to fit it in to. e.g. GRASS conforms
to many common UNIX conventions which many new users are not familiar
with. Some help must be given but re-documenting all of UNIX is beyond
us. This is a big reason I don't mind spending a little more time learning
how to do something in GRASS actually.. any skill I pick up is usually
transferable to other unrelated software & tasks which makes picking up
new stuff (like GMT or Matlab scripting) that much easier.


Hamish