pamfile(1) - Man pages

Pamfile User Manual(1) General Commands Manual Pamfile User Manual(1)

NAME
pamfile - describe a Netpbm (PAM or PNM) file

SYNOPSIS
pamfile

[-allimages] [-comments] [-count] [-machine] [-size]

[file ...]

Minimum unique abbreviations of options are acceptable. You may use
double hyphens instead of single hyphen to denote options. You may use
white space in place of the equals sign to separate an option name from
its value.

DESCRIPTION
This program is part of Netpbm(1).

pamfile reads one or more Netpbm files as input and writes out short de-
scriptions of the image type, size, etc. This is partly for use in
shell scripts, so the format is not particularly pretty.

By default, pamfile reads only the header of the input file. If that
file is a pipe, that might cause problems for the process that is feed-
ing the pipe. In that case, see the -allimages option.

OPTIONS
In addition to the options common to all programs based on libnetpbm
(most notably -quiet, see ]8;;index.html#commonoptions\ Common Options]8;;\ ), pamfile recognizes the fol-
lowing command line options:

-allimages
This option causes pamfile to describe every image in each input
file. Without this option, pamfile describes only the first im-
age in each input file.

This option also causes pamfile to read all the images from the
input stream, whereas without it, pamfile reads only the header
of the first one. If the input stream is from a pipe, the
process that is feeding the pipe might require the entire stream
to be consumed. In that case, use this option even if the stream
contains only one image.

This option has no effect if you also specify -count.

Note that before July 2000, a file could not contain more than
one image and many programs ignore all but the first.

This option was new in Netpbm 9.5 (July 2000).

-comments
This option causes pamfile to include for each PAM image a report
of the comments from the header of the image.

For a PBM, PGM, or PPM image, pamfile reports there are no com-
ments, even if there are.

This option was new in Netpbm 10.35 (August 2006).

-count This option causes pamfile to display only a count of how many
images are in each input file.

As with -allimages, this causes pamfile to read all the images.

You may specify at most one of -count, -machine, and -size.

This option was new with Netpbm 10.31 (December 2005).

-machine
This makes the output more convenient for a machine to use, while
less convenient for a human. pamfile reports the same informa-
tion
as with no options.

The output is one line of ASCII text per image. Each line con-
sists of
the file name, followed by a colon, followed by a space,
then the
following tokens with a space in between:

• Format: 'PAM', 'PBM', 'PGM', or
'PPM',

• Subformat: 'PLAIN' or 'RAW'

• Width: in pixels, in decimal

• Height: in pixels, in decimal

• Depth: in decimal

• Maxval: in decimal (1 if image is PBM)

• Tuple type (emulated if the image is not PAM)

You may specify at most one of -count, -machine, and -size.

This option was new in Netpbm 10.86 (March 2019).

-size This makes the output contain only the height and width of the
image, in a form convenient for machine processing.

There is one line of output per image, consisting of two blank-
delimited tokens:

• Width: in pixels, in decimal

• Height: in pixels, in decimal

Note that there is no way to tell which image is in which file,
if you have multiple input files with multiple images. If that
is your case, use -machine instead.

You may specify at most one of -count, -machine, and -size.

This option was new in Netpbm 10.86 (March 2019).