r.null - GRASS GIS manual

Note: This document is for an older version of GRASS GIS that will be discontinued soon. You should upgrade, and read the current manual page.

NAME

r.null - Manages NULL-values of given raster map.

KEYWORDS

raster, null data

SYNOPSIS

r.null

r.null --help

r.null [-fincrz] map=name [setnull=val[-val][,val[-val],...]] [null=float] [--help] [--verbose] [--quiet] [--ui]

Flags:

-f: Only do the work if the map is floating-point
-i: Only do the work if the map is integer
-n: Only do the work if the map doesn't have a NULL-value bitmap file
-c: Create NULL-value bitmap file validating all data cells
-r: Remove NULL-value bitmap file
-z: Re-create NULL-value bitmap file (to compress or uncompress)
--help: Print usage summary
--verbose: Verbose module output
--quiet: Quiet module output
--ui: Force launching GUI dialog

Parameters:

map=name [required]: Name of raster map for which to edit null values
setnull=val[-val][,val[-val],...]: List of cell values to be set to NULL
null=float: The value to replace the null value by

DESCRIPTION
NOTES
EXAMPLES
SEE ALSO
AUTHOR

DESCRIPTION

The function of r.null is to explicitly create the NULL-value bitmap file. The intended usage is to update maps that do not have a NULL-value bitmap file (i.e. to indicate for each pixel if zero is a valid value or is to be considered as NULL, i.e. no data value). The module does not work with reclassified or external maps.

The design is flexible. Ranges of values can be set to NULL and/or the NULL value can be eliminated and replace with a specified value.

The setnull parameter is used to specify values in the ranges to be set to NULL. A range is either a single value (e.g., 5.3), or a pair of values (e.g., 4.76-34.56). Existing NULL-values are left NULL, unless the null argument is requested.

The null parameter eliminates the NULL value and replaces it with value. This argument is applied only to existing NULL values, and not to the NULLs created by the setnull argument.

NOTES

Note that the value is restricted to integer if the map is an integer map.

r.null and reclassified maps

r.null does not support reclassified maps because, if r.null was run on the reclass raster it would alter the original and any other reclass rasters of the original. Therefore r.null does not allow recoding reclassified maps (products of r.reclass).
As a workaround, the way to recode such a map is: The user creates a raster map out of the reclassified map by copying it:

r.mapcalc "newmap = reclass"

NULL data compression

By default no data files (i.e., NULL files) are not compressed unless a specific environment variable is set. The NULL file compression must be explicitly turned on with export GRASS_COMPRESS_NULLS=1.
Warning: such raster maps can then only be opened with GRASS GIS 7.2.0 or later. NULL file compression can be managed with r.null -z.

External maps

From the r.external documentation: GDAL-linked (r.external) maps do not have or use a NULL bitmap, hence r.null cannot manipulate them directly. Here NULL cells are those whose value matches the value reported by the GDALGetRasterNoDataValue() function. To apply the GDAL-linked the user need to either create a MASK (e.g. with r.mask) and then "apply" it using e.g. r.resample, or use r.mapcalc to create a copy with the appropriate categories changed to NULL (if() condition).