Overview

The SAC program can be run from a variety of scripting languages and shells. Provided below are a few examples of using SAC within the bounds of either a shell or high-level scripting language. Included are examples for sh, csh, perl and python. Other languages very likely have a similar format. Terminator string EOF is required to start at the first character of a line or the scripts will not work.

Setting the environment variable SAC_DISPLAY_COPYRIGHT to 0 will force SAC not to display the copyright header information. In the sh shell the option is

export SAC_DISPLAY_COPYRIGHT=0

and in csh the syntax is

setenv SAC_DISPLAY_COPYRIGHT 0

Simple Examples

sh

#!/bin/sh

sac <<EOF
fg seismo
lh columns 2
quit
EOF

csh

#!/bin/csh

sac <<EOF
fg seismo
lh columns 2
quit
EOF

perl

#!/usr/bin/env perl

open(SAC, "| sac ") or die "Error opening sac";
print SAC "fg seismo\n";
print SAC "lh columns 2\n";
print SAC "quit\n";
close(SAC);

python

#!/usr/bin/env python

import subprocess

p = subprocess.Popen(['sac'],
                     stdout = subprocess.PIPE,
                     stdin  = subprocess.PIPE,
                     stderr = subprocess.STDOUT )

out = p.communicate('''
fg seismo
lh columns 2
quit
''')

print out[0]

Extended Examples

The following examples take a set of SAC files in the current directory and low pass filter then at 1.0 Hz with a 2 pass, 4th order filter. The shell examples, sh and csh, require an invocation of sac for each file, but the scripting languages, perl and python, do not. The python and perl scripts use more complex and more powerful string handling than do the shell scripts.

sh

#!/bin/sh

for file in *.SAC; do
   sac <<EOF
   echo on
   read $file
   rmean
   rtrend
   lp co 0.1 p 2 n 4
   write ${file}.filtered
   quit
EOF
done

csh

#!/bin/csh

foreach file ( *SAC )
   sac <<EOF
   echo on
   read $file
   rmean
   rtrend
   lp co 0.1 p 2 n 4
   write ${file}.filtered
   quit
EOF
end

perl

#!/usr/bin/env perl

open(SAC, "| sac ") or die "Error opening sac";
foreach $file ( glob("*.SAC") ) {
   print SAC qq[
     read $file
     rmean
     rtrend\
     lp co 0.1 p 2 n 4
     write ${file}.filtered
   ];
}
print SAC "quit\n";
close(SAC);

python

#!/usr/bin/env python

import subprocess
import glob

p = subprocess.Popen(['sac'],
                     stdout = subprocess.PIPE,
                     stdin  = subprocess.PIPE,
                     stderr = subprocess.STDOUT )

s = "echo on\n"
for filename in glob.glob("*.SAC"):
    s += '''
       read %(file)s
       rmean
       rtrend
       lp co 0.1 p 2 n 4
       write %(file)s.filtered
    ''' % ( {'file': filename } )
s += "quit\n"
out = p.communicate( s )
print out[0]