m.measure - GRASS manual
Author: GRASS Development Team
Description: m.measure: Measures the lengths and areas of features.
Keywords: miscellaneous, measurement, distance, area

## NAME

m.measure - Measures the lengths and areas of features.

## KEYWORDS

miscellaneous, measurement, distance, area

## SYNOPSIS

m.measure
m.measure --help
m.measure [-g] coordinates=east,north[,east,north,...] [units=string] format=name [--help] [--verbose] [--quiet] [--ui]

### Flags:

-g
  Shell script style [deprecated]
  This flag is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Use format=shell instead.
--help
  Print usage summary
--verbose
  Verbose module output
--quiet
  Quiet module output
--ui
  Force launching GUI dialog

### Parameters:

coordinates=east,north[,east,north,...] [required]
  Coordinates
units=string
  Units
  Default: project map units
  Options: miles, feet, meters, kilometers, acres, hectares
format=name [required]
  Output format
  Options: plain, shell, json
  Default: plain
  plain: Plain text output
  shell: shell script style output
  json: JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)

## DESCRIPTION

m.measure provides the user with a way to measure the lengths and areas of lines and polygons. Areas can be stated in acres, hectares, square miles, square feet, square meters and square kilometers.

## EXAMPLES

Distance example in a latitude-longitude coordinate reference system (on great circle, i.e. an orthodrome):

    Bonn_DE="7.09549,50.73438"
    Philadelphia_US="-75.16379,39.95233"

    m.measure coordinates="$Bonn_DE,$Philadelphia_US" units=kilometers
    Length:  6217.916452 kilometers

Visualization (with d.geodesic) of m.measure distance example

As an example for the North Carolina sample dataset, here four points describing a square of 1000m side length:

    m.measure units=meters \
      coordinates=922000,2106000,923000,2106000,923000,2107000,922000,2107000
    Length:  3000.000000 meters
    Area:    1000000.000000 square meters

    # script style output:
    m.measure -g units=hectares \
      coordinates=922000,2106000,923000,2106000,923000,2107000,922000,2107000
    units=meters,square meters
    length=3000.000000
    area=1000000.000000

## SEE ALSO

d.geodesic

## AUTHORS

Glynn Clements
Some updates by Martin Landa, CTU in Prague, Czech Republic
Derived from d.measure by James Westervelt, Michael Shapiro, U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratory

## SOURCE CODE

Available at: m.measure source code (history)

Accessed: Saturday May 09 13:03:22 2026

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