[GRASS-user] Re: GRASS-user] What scripting language should I learn?

[Richard Chirgwin]

On 3/12/10 3:55 PM, grass-user-request at lists.osgeo.org wrote:
> Message: 3
> Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2010 15:23:49 -0800 (PST)
> From: Catlike<cogreg at gmail.com>
> Subject: [GRASS-user] What scripting language should I learn?
> To:grass-user at lists.osgeo.org
> Message-ID:<1291332229750-5798051.post at n2.nabble.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
>
> I am brand new to GRASS. I am just learning QGIS now, and GRASS seems (from
> the forum posts) to be useful if not quite essential with QGIS.
> I have no idea what most of the answers (or the questions!) mean on these
> fora, QGIS nor GRASS. It looks like I need to learn how to write computer
> scripts. OK -- resources being limited, which language do you think I should
> focus on learning? I hear about Python (in QGIS), R, SQL, ... Can't learn
> them all! So I need to choose one, right?
> My GIS experience is limited. I got a 24-semester-unit, two-year GIS
> certificate, but that was six years ago, the program was not too good, and I
> haven't used it at all since. (It was 95% ESRI-based, the rest TNTmips.)
> Thank you.
> -- View this message in context: 
> http://osgeo-org.1803224.n2.nabble.com/What-scripting-language-should-I-learn-tp5798051p5798051.html 
> Sent from the Grass - Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Catlike,

If you're using either OSX or Linux, bash scripting is a wonderful entry 
to learning how to automate tasks.

However, before you get to scripting, I suggest you spend some time 
learning how to use the Grass-GIS commands at the command line. That 
way, you'll be familiar with how the commands work before you try to 
script them.

I'm very nervous of the day when I'll have to try to learn Python to 
write scripts!

It is also very valuable to learn MySQL for querying linked tables.

Although Grass-GIS can be daunting, it can be learned. When I started 
using Grass-GIS in 2006, I had zero GIS experience!

Cheers,
Richard