The New SU Users Manual

John W. Stockwell, Jr. & Jack K. Cohen

Version 4.0: Jan 2008

The Seismic Unix project is supported by:
Center for Wave Phenomena

Colorado School of Mines

Golden, CO 80401, USA
Past support was received from:
The Society of Exploration Geophysicists

The Gas Research Institute

ii

Contents
Licensing and other Legal Matters

vii

Acknowledgements

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1 About SU
1.1 What SU is . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2 What SU is not . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.3 Obtaining and Installing SU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2 Help facilities
2.1 SUHELP - List the Executable Programs and Shell Scripts . . . . . . .
2.2 SUNAME - Lists the Name and Short Description of Every Item in SU
2.3 The Selfdoc - Program Self-Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.4 SUDOC - List the Full Online Documentation of any Item in SU . . . .
2.5 SUFIND - Find SU Items with a Given String . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.5.1 Getting information about SU programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.6 GENDOCS - An Instant LaTeX Document Containing All Selfdocs . . .
2.7 Suhelp.html . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.8 Demos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.9 Other Help Mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3 Core Seismic Unix Programs

3.1 Reading and Writing Data to and from Tapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.1.1 The SEGY format and the SU data format . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.1.2 SEGYREAD - Getting SEG-Y data into SU . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.1.3 SEG-Y abuses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.1.4 SEGYWRITE - Writing an SEGY Tape or Diskfile . . . . . . . . .
3.1.5 SEGYHDRS - make SEG-Y ascii and binary headers for segywrite
3.1.6 BHEDTOPAR, SETBHED - Editing the binary header file . . . .
3.1.7 SEGDREAD - Other SEG formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.1.8 DT1TOSU - Non-SEG tape formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.2 Data Format conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.2.1 A2B and B2A - ASCII to Binary, Binary to ASCII . . . . . . . . .
3.2.2 FTNSTRIP - Importing Fortran Data to C . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.2.3 Going from C to Fortran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.2.4 H2B - Importing 8 Bit Hexidecimal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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CONTENTS

3.3

3.4

3.5

3.2.5 RECAST - Changing Binary Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3.2.6 TRANSP - Transposing Binary Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.2.7 FARITH - Performs simple arithmetic on binary data. . . . . . .
Trace Header Manipulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.3.1 SUADDHEAD - Adding SU Headers to Binary Data . . . . . . .
3.3.2 SUSTRIP - Strip SU headers SU data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.3.3 SUPASTE - Paste SU Headers on to Binary Data . . . . . . . .
Byte Swapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.4.1 SWAPBYTES - Swap the Bytes of Binary (non-SU) Data . . . .
3.4.2 SUSWAPBYTES - Swap the Bytes of SU Data . . . . . . . . . .
Setting, Editing, and Viewing Trace Header Fields . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.5.1 SUADDHEAD - add SU (SEGY-style) Trace Headers . . . . . .
3.5.2 SUSTRIP and SUPASTE - Strip and Paste SU Headers . . . . .
3.5.3 SUKEYWORD - See SU Keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.5.4 SURANGE - Get the Range of Header Values . . . . . . . . . . .
3.5.5 SUGETHW - Get the Values of Header Words in SU Data . . .
3.5.6 SUSHW - Set the Header Words in SU Data . . . . . . . . . . .
3.5.7 Setting Geometry - Converting Observers Logs to Trace Headers
3.5.8 SUCHW - Change (or Compute) Header Words in SU Data . . .
3.5.9 SUEDIT and SUXEDIT - Edit the Header Words in SU Data . .

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4 Viewing SU Data in X-Windows and PostScript

4.1 X-Windows Plotting Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.1.1 Plotting General Floating Point Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.1.2 X-Windows Plotting of SU Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.1.3 Special Features of X-Windows Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.1.4 PostScript Plotting Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.1.5 PostScript Plotting of General Floating Point Data . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.1.6 PostScript Plotting of SU Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.2 Additional PostScript Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.2.1 PSBBOX - Changing the BoundingBox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.2.2 PSMERGE, MERGE2, MERGE4 - Merging PostScript Plots . . . . . .
4.3 Trace Picking Utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.4 Editing SU Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.4.1 SUWIND - window traces by key word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.4.2 SUSORT - sort on any SEGY header keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.4.3 SURAMP and SUTAPER - tapering data values . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.4.4 SUKILL, SUZERO, SUNULL, SUMUTE - zeroing out data . . . . . . .
4.4.5 SUVCAT and CAT - Concatenating Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.4.6 SUVLENGTH - Adjust Variable Length Traces to a Common Number of
Samples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5 General Operations on SU Data
5.0.7 SUADDNOISE - Add noise to SU data . . . . . .
5.0.8 SUGAIN - Gaining to SU data . . . . . . . . . . .
5.0.9 SUOP - Unary Arithmetic Operations on SU Data
5.0.10 SUOP2 - Binary Operations with SU data . . . . .

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CONTENTS
5.1

5.2
5.3
5.4

Transform and Filtering Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

5.1.1 Fourier Transform Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.1.2 1D Fourier Transforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.1.3 2D Fourier Transforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Hilbert Transform, Trace Attributes, and Time-Frequency Domain . . . . . . . .
Radon Transform - Tau P Filtering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1D Filtering Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.4.1 SUFILTER - applies a zero-phase, sine-squared tapered filter . . . . . . .
5.4.2 SUBFILT - apply Butterworth bandpass filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.4.3 SUCONV, SUXCOR - convolution, correlation with a user-supplied filter
5.4.4 SUPEF - Wiener predictive error filtering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.4.5 SUSHAPE - Wiener shaping filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.4.6 SURESAMP - Resample Data in Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

6 Seismic Modeling Utilities

6.1 Background Wavespeed Profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.2 Uniformly Sampled Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.3 Synthetic Data Generators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.4 Delaunay Triangulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.4.1 Triangulated Model Building . . . . . . . . . .
6.4.2 Synthetic Seismic Data in Triangulated Media
6.5 Tetrahedral Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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7 Seismic Processing Utilities

7.1 SUSTACK, SURECIP, SUDIVSTACK - Stacking Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.2 SUVELAN, SUNMO - Velocity Analysis and Normal Moveout Correction . . .
7.3 SUDMOFK, SUDMOTX, SUDMOVZ - Dip Moveout Correction . . . . . . . .
7.4 Seismic Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.4.1 SUGAZMIG, SUMIGPS, SUMIGPSPI, SUMIGSPLIT - Phase Shift Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.4.2 SUKDMIG2D, SUMIGTOPO2D, SUDATUMK2DR, SUDATUMK2DS 2D Kirchhoff Migration, and Datuming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.4.3 SUMIGFD, SUMIGFFD - Finite-Difference Migration . . . . . . . . . .
7.4.4 SUMIGTK - Time-Wavenumber Domain Migration . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.4.5 SUSTOLT - Stolt Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8 Processing Flows with SU
8.1 SU and UNIX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.2 Understanding and using SU shell programs .
8.2.1 A simple SU processing flow example .
8.2.2 Executing shell programs . . . . . . .
8.2.3 A typical SU processing flow . . . . .
8.3 Extending SU by shell programming . . . . .

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vi

CONTENTS

9 Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

9.1 Installation questions . . . . . . . . . . .
9.2 Data format questions . . . . . . . . . .
9.3 Tape reading and writing . . . . . . . .
9.4 Geometry Setting . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.5 Technical Questions . . . . . . . . . . .
9.6 General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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10 How to Write an SU Program

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10.1 Setting up the Makefile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
10.2 A template SU program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
10.3 Writing a new program: suvlength . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
A Obtaining and Installing SU
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A.1 Obtaining files by anonymous ftp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
A.2 Requirements for installing the package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
A.3 A quick test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
B Help Facililties
B.1 Suhelp . . . . . . . . . .
B.2 Suname . . . . . . . . .
B.3 Suhelp.html . . . . . . .
B.4 SUKEYWORD - list the

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SU datatype (SEGY) Keywords

C DEMOS - a brief descriptions of the demos

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139

Licensing and other Legal Matters

This file is property of the Colorado School of Mines.

Copyright 2007, Colorado School of Mines,
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or

without modification, are permitted provided that the following
conditions are met:
*
*

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright

notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above
copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following
disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided
with the distribution.
Neither the name of the Colorado School of Mines nor the names of
its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

Warranty Disclaimer:
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COLORADO SCHOOL OF MINES AND CONTRIBUTORS
"AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT
LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
COLORADO SCHOOL OF MINES OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT,
INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING,
BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER
CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT,
STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING
IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE

viii

LICENCE and LEGAL

POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Export Restriction Disclaimer:

We believe that CWP/SU: Seismic Un*x is a low technology product that does
not appear on the Department of Commerce CCL list of restricted exports.
Accordingly, we believe that our product meets the qualifications of
an ECCN (export control classification number) of EAR99 and we believe
it fits the qualifications of NRR (no restrictions required), and
is thus not subject to export restrictions of any variety.
Approved Reference Format:
In publications, please refer to SU as per the following example:
Cohen, J. K. and Stockwell, Jr. J. W., (200_), CWP/SU: Seismic Un*x
Release No. __: an open source software package for seismic
research and processing,
Center for Wave Phenomena, Colorado School of Mines.

Articles about SU in peer-reviewed journals:

Saeki, T., (1999), A guide to Seismic Un*x (SU)(2)---examples of data processing (part 1),
Stockwell, Jr. J. W. (1999), The CWP/SU: Seismic Un*x Package, Computers and Geosciences,
Stockwell, Jr. J. W. (1997), Free Software in Education: A case study of CWP/SU: Seismic U
Templeton, M. E., Gough, C.A., (1998), Web Seismic Un*x: Making seismic reflection process
Acknowledgements:
SU stands for CWP/SU:Seismic Un*x, a processing line developed at Colorado
School of Mines, partially based on Stanford Exploration Project (SEP)
software.

Acknowledgments
The Seismic Unix project is partially funded by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG),
and by the Center for Wave Phenomena (CWP), Department of Geophysical Engineering,
Colorado School of Mines. Past support for SU has included these groups, as well as the Gas
Research Institute (GRI).
Thank you SEG, and CWP for your continued support!
The sponsors of the CWP Consortium Project have long been partners in the SU project
and we are pleased to explicitly acknowledge that relationship here. In addition, we wish to
acknowledge extra support supplied in the past by IBM Corporation and by the Center for
Geoscience Computing at the Colorado School of Mines during the late 1980s when SU was
ported to the modern workstation from its previous incarnation on graphics terminals.
So many faculty and students, both at our Center and elsewhere, have contributed to SU,
that it is impossible to list them all here. However, certain people have made such important
contributions that they deserve explicit mention.
Einar Kjartansson began writing what is now called SU (the SY package) in the late 1970s
while still a graduate student at Jon Claerbouts Stanford Exploration Project (SEP). He
continued to expand the package while he was a professor at the University of Utah in the
early eighties. In 1984, during an extended visit to SEP Einar introduced SY to Shuki Ronen,
then a graduate student at Stanford. Ronen further developed SY from 1984 to 1986. Other
students at SEP started to use it and contributed code and ideas. SY was inspired by much
other software developed at SEP and benefited from the foundations laid by Clairbout and
many of his students; Rob Clayton, Stew Levin, Dave Hale, Jeff Thorson, Chuck Sword, and
others who pioneered seismic processing on Unix in the seventies and early eighties.
In 1986, Shuki Ronen brought this work to our Center during a one year postdoctoral
appointment at the Colorado School of Mines. During this time, Ronen aided Cohen in turning
SU into a supportable and exportable product.
Chris Liner, while a student at the Center, contributed to many of the graphics codes used in
the pre-workstation (i.e, graphics terminal) age of SU. Liners broad knowledge of seismology
and seismic processing enabled him to make a positive and continuing influence on the SU
coding philosophy.
Craig Artley, now at Golden Geophysical, made major contributions to the graphics codes
while a student at CWP and continues to make significant contributions to the general package.
Dave Hale wrote several of the heavy duty processing codes as well as most of the core
scientific and graphics libraries. His knowledge of good C-language coding practice helped make
our package an excellent example for applied computer scientists.
Ken Larner contributed many user interface ideas based on his extensive knowledge of
seismic processing in the real world.
ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

John Scales showed how to use SU effectively in the classroom in his electronic text, Theory
of Seismic Imaging, Samizdat Press, 1994. This text is available from the Samizdat press site
at: samizdat.mines.edu.
John Stockwells involvment with SU began in 1989. He is largely responsible for designing
the Makefile structure that makes the package easy to install on the majority of Unix platforms.
He has been the main contact for the project since the first public release of SU in September
of 1992 (Release 17). After Jack Cohens death in 1996, Stockwell assumed the role of principal
investigator of the SU project and has remained in this capacity to the present. The number of
codes has more than tripled in the 11 years, since John Stockwell has been PI of the project.
The project has also has had extensive technical help from the worldwide SU user community. Among those who should be singled out for mention are Tony Kocurko at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Toralf Foerster of the Baltic Sea Research Institute in Warnemuende
Germany, Stewart A. Levin, John Anderson, and Joe Oravetz at Mobil Oil, Joe Dellinger at
Amoco, Matthew Rutty, Jens Hartmann, Alexander Koek, Michelle Miller of the University of
Southern California at Chico, Berend Scheffers, and Guy Drijkoningen, Delft, Dominique Rousset, Pau and Marc Schaming, Strasbourg, Matt Lamont, Curtin University, Australia, Wenying
Cai at the University of Utah, Brian Macy of Phillips Petroleum, Robert Krueger of Terrasys,
Torsten Shoenfelder of the University of Koeln, Germany, Ian Kay of the Geological Survey
of Canada, Dr. Toshiki Watanabe of the University of Kyoto, and independent consultant
Reg Beardsley. Our apologies in advance for undoubtedly omitting mention of other deserving
contributors to SUwe promise to include you in future updates of this manual!
We especially thank Barbara McLenon for her detailed suggestions on the text and also for
her excellent design of this document, as well as the SU pamphlets, and other materials, which
we distribute at public meetings.

In Memoriam
Dr. Jack K. Cohen passed away in October 1996. The Seismic Unix package exists owing to
his knowledge of seismic processing, his creativity, and his desire to make a lasting contribution
to the scientific community. He will surely be missed by all who had contact with him in the
mathematical, geophysical, and SU-user communities.

Preface
In the 7 years that have elapsed since the first version of this manual was distributed, there
have been numerous changes in the SU package. These changes have been a result of both
in-house activities here at CWP and, equally important, to the many contributions of code,
bug fixes, extensions, and suggestions from SU users outside of CWP. After reviewing these
many changes and extensions, and after much discussion with members of the worldwide SU
user community, it has become apparent that a new manual was necessary.
This new version began in preparation for a short course on SU at the CREWES project at
the University of Calgary. Many of the items that were in the original manual, such as information about obtaining and installing the package, have been have been moved to appendices.
Additional sections describing the core collection of programs have been added. The entire
manual has been expanded to include more detailed descriptions of the codes.
The intent is that you will be able to find your way around the package, via the help
mechanisms, that you will learn to run the programs by running the demos, and finally will be
able to see how to begin writing SU code, drawing on the source code of the package.

xi

xii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Chapter 1

About SU
In 1987, Jack K. Cohen and Shuki Ronen of the Center for Wave Phenomena (CWP) at the
Colorado School of Mines (CSM) conceived a bold plan. This plan was to create a seismic
processing environment for Unix-based systems, written in the C language, that would extend
the Unix operating system to seismic processing and research tasks. Furthermore, they intended
that the package be freely available as full source code to anyone who would want it.
They began with a package called SY, started by Einar Kjartansson while he was a graduate student at Jon Claerbouts Stanford Exploration Project (SEP) in the late seventies, and
improved while he was a professor at the University of Utah in the eighties. In 1984 Einar
returned to SEP to baby sit the students (and Jons house) while Claerbout went for a summer
vacation. Einar introduced SY to Shuki Ronen, then a graduate student at SEP (a day before
Claerbout returned from vacation and Einar left back to Utah). Ronen further developed SY
from 1984 to 1986. Other students at SEP started to use it and contributed code and ideas.
SY was inspired by much other software developed at SEP and benefited from the foundations
laid by Clarbout and many of his students; Rob Clayton, Stew Levin, Dave Hale, Jeff Thorson,
Chuck Sword, and others who pioneered seismic processing on Unix in the seventies and early
eighties.
In 1986, when Ronen accepted a one year visiting professorship at CSM he was encouraged
by Claerbout to disseminate whatever SEP ideas and software he cared for. In the days before
Internet and ftp, SY was on a 9 track tape in the trunk of the car he drove from California to
Colorado. Ronen went to CSM to replace Jack Cohen who went on sabbatical. Fortunately
for SU, Jacks sabbatical lasted only two months, instead of the whole year initially planned,
because of the poor health of Jacks son Dan. Upon Jacks return to CWP, he became interested
in SY. This package was a sharp departure from the commercial seismic processing software
that was available at the time. The industry standard at the time was to use Fortran programs
on VAX-VMS based systems.
By the time Cohen and Ronen created the first version of SU in 1987 the sponsors of CWP
had already begun showing interest in the package. The availability of Unix-based workstations
combined with the influx of Unix-literate geophysicists from the major academic institutions,
shifted the industry to using primarily Unix-based systems for research and for processing,
increasing the interest in Unix-based software, including SU.
Until September of 1992, SU was used primarily in-house at CWP. Earlier versions of SU
had been ported to CWP sponsor companies, even providing the basis for in-house seismic processing packages developed by some of those companies! Once SU became generally available
1

CHAPTER 1. ABOUT SU

on the Internet, it began to be used by a much broader community. The package is used by
exploration geophysicists, earthquake seismologists, environmental engineers, software developers and others. It is used by scientific staff in both small geotechnical companies and major
oil and gas companies, and by academics and government researchers, both as a seismic data
processing and software development environment.

1.1

What SU is

The SU package is free software, meaning that you may have unrestricted use of the codes for
both processing and software development, provided that you honor the license that appears
at the beginning of this manual and as the file LEGAL STATEMENT in the current release
of the package. (This latter file takes precedence). The package is maintained and expanded
periodically, with each new release appearing at 3 to 6 month intervals, depending on changes
that accumulate in the official version here at CWP. The package is distributed with the full
source code, so that users can alter and extend its capabilities. The philosophy behind the
package is to provide both a free processing and development environment in a proven structure
that can be maintained and expanded to suit the needs of a variety of users.
The package is not necessarily restricted to seismic processing tasks, however. A broad
suite of wave-related processing can be done with SU, making it a somewhat more general
package than the word seismic implies. SU is intended as an extension of the Unix operating
system, and therefore shares many characteristics of the Unix, including Unix flexibility and
expandibility. The fundamental Unix philosophy is that all operating system commands are
programs run under that operating system. The idea is that individual tasks be identified, and
that small programs be written to do those tasks, and those tasks alone. The commands may
have options that permit variations on those tasks, but the fundamental idea is one-program,
one-task. Because Unix is a multi-tasking operating system, multiple processes may be strung
together in a cascade via pipes (|).
This decentralization has the advantage of minimizing overhead by not launching single
monster applications that try to do everything, as is seen in Microsoft applications, or in
some commercial seismic utilities, for example.
Unix has the added feature of supporting a variety of shell languages, making Unix, itself,
a meta-language. Seismic Unix benefits from all of these attributes as well. In combination
with standard Unix programs, Seismic Unix programs may be used in shell scripts to extend
the functionality of the package.
Of course, it may be that no Unix or Seismic Unix program will fulfill a specific task. This
means that new code has to be written. The availability of a standard set of source code,
designed to be readable by human beings, can expedite the process of extending the package
through the addition of new source code.

1.2

What SU is not

The SU package is not a graphical user interface driven utility at this time, though there
are several possibilities including Java and TCL/TK scripts, which may be exploited for this
purpose in the future. Because most commercial seismic processing packages are GUI-based, it
is unavoidable that users will expect SU to be similar to these packages. However, this is not
a fair comparison, for several reasons.

1.3. OBTAINING AND INSTALLING SU

As mentioned above, SU is an extension of the Unix operating system. Just as there are no
GUI driven Unix operating systems that give full access to all of the capabilities of Unix from
menus, it is not reasonable to expect full access to Seismic Unix through such an interface. At
most, any SU interface will give limited access to the capabilities of the package.
SU is not a replacement for commercial seismic packages. Commercial seismic software
packages are industrial-strength utilities designed for the express purpose of production-level
seismic processing. If you do commercial-level processing, and have dedicated, or plan to
dedicate funds to purchase one or more license of such commercial software, then it is unlikely
that you will be able to substitute SU for the commercial utility.
However, SU can be an important adjunct to any commercial package you use. Where
commercial packages are used for production work, SU often has found a place as a prototyping package. Also, if new code needs to be written, SU can provide a starting base for
new software applications. Indeed, the availability of seismic processing capability may encourage non-processors to experiment with processing, non-software-developers to experiment with
software development, and non-researchers to engage in research.
SU is not confined to seismic applications. It may find use, both in geophysical and more
general signal processing applications. It certainly can be useful for teaching students about
wave related signal processing and, particularly, Fourier transform properties. This can
include radar, non-seismic acoustics, and image processing, just to name a few.
Another thing that SU is not, at least in its current version, is a 3D package. However, it
is not, expressly a 2D package, either, as there are numerous filtering and trace manipulation
tasks that are the same in 2D as in 3D. It is likely, however, that there will be 3D applications
in future releases of SU. A single 3D migration code appeared first in Release 32, which will
hopefully set the stage for new developments.

1.3

Obtaining and Installing SU

Because the coding standards of SU stress portability, the package will install on any system
that is running some form of the Unix operating system, and has a decent version of make
and an ANSI C compiler. The programs GNU Make and GCC may be substituted for these
respective programs on most systems.1
New releases of SU are issued at 3 to 6 month intervals, depending upon the accumulation
of changes in the home version at CWP. Old releases are not supported. However, if materials
appear to break between releases, please contact me (John Stockwell) by email so that we can
fix the problem.
Instructions for obtaining and installing SU may be found in Appendix A of this manual.

1
Remarkably, a software package called CYGWIN32, recently released by the GNU project, provides enough
Unix-like functionality, so that SU may be ported to Windows NT, with no changes to the SU source code or
Makefiles!

CHAPTER 1. ABOUT SU

Chapter 2

Help facilities
Like the Unix operating system, Seismic Unix may be thought of as a language (or metalanguage). As with any language, a certain amount of vocabulary must be mastered before
useful operations may be performed. Because the SU contains many programs, there must
be a dictionary to permit the inevitable questions about vocabulary can be answered. It is
intended that this manual be the beginning of such a dictionary.
SU does not have man pages, in the same way that Unix does, but it does have equivalent internal documentation mechanisms. There is a general level help utilities which give
an overview of what is available. For information about specific aspects of a particular code,
the majority of the programs contain a selfdoca self-documentation paragraph, which will
appear when the name of the program is typed on the commandline, with no options.
(In all of the examples that follow, the percent sign % indicates a Unix commandline
prompt, and is not typed as part of the command.)
The following tools provide internal documentation at various levels of detail for the main
programs, shell scripts, and library functions in the package:
SUHELP - list the CWP/SU programs and shells
SUNAME - get name line from self-docs and location of the source code
The selfdoc - is an internal documentation utility which exists in the majority of executable
mains and shell scripts. The selfdoc is seen by typing the name of the program or shell
script on the commandline with no arguments, and without redirection of input or output
via pipes | or Unix redirects > <, For non-executables (library routines) and for programs
without the selfdoc feature, there is a dummy selfdoc included which provides a database
of information about those items, as well,
SUDOC - get DOC listing for code
SUFIND - get info from self-docs
GENDOCS - generate complete list of selfdocs in latex form
suhelp.html - is an HTML global overview of SU programs by subject matter,
SUKEYWORD guide to SU keywords in segy.h
This chapter discusses each of these utilities, with the intent of showing the reader how to
get from the most general to the most specific information about SU programs.
5

2.1

CHAPTER 2. HELP FACILITIES

SUHELP - List the Executable Programs and Shell Scripts

For a general listing of the contents of SU, which includes each executable (that is, each main
program and shell script) in the package type:
% suhelp
CWP PROGRAMS: (no self-documentation)
ctrlstrip
fcat
maxints
downfort
isatty
pause

t
upfort

PAR PROGRAMS: (programs with self-documentation)

a2b
kaperture
resamp
transp
b2a
makevel
smooth2
unif2
farith
mkparfile
smoothint2
unisam
ftnstrip
prplot
subset
unisam2
h2b
recast
swapbytes
velconv

vtlvz
wkbj

press return key to continue

....

Please type suhelp or see Appendix B for the full text.

Another useful command sequence is:
% suhelp | lpr
which will the output from suhelp to the local print.

2.2

SUNAME - Lists the Name and Short Description of Every

Item in SU

A more complete listing of the contents of the CWP/SU package may be obtained by typing
% suname
----- CWP Free Programs ----CWPROOT=/usr/local/cwp
Mains:
In CWPROOT/src/cwp/main:
* CTRLSTRIP - Strip non-graphic characters
* DOWNFORT - change Fortran programs to lower case, preserving strings
* FCAT - fast cat with 1 read per file
* ISATTY - pass on return from isatty(2)
* MAXINTS - Compute maximum and minimum sizes for integer types
* PAUSE - prompt and wait for user signal to continue
* T - time and date for non-military types
* UPFORT - change Fortran programs to upper case, preserving strings
In CWPROOT/src/par/main:

2.3. THE SELFDOC - PROGRAM SELF-DOCUMENTATION

A2B - convert ascii floats to binary

B2A - convert binary floats to ascii
DZDV - determine depth derivative with respect to the velocity ",
FARITH - File ARITHmetic -- perform simple arithmetic with binary files
FTNSTRIP - convert a file of floats plus record delimiters created
H2B - convert 8 bit hexidecimal floats to binary
KAPERTURE - generate the k domain of a line scatterer for a seismic array
MAKEVEL - MAKE a VELocity function v(x,y,z)
MKPARFILE - convert ascii to par file format
PRPLOT - PRinter PLOT of 1-D arrays f(x1) from a 2-D function f(x1,x2)
RAYT2D - traveltime Tables calculated by 2D paraxial RAY tracing
RECAST - RECAST data type (convert from one data type to another)
REGRID3 - REwrite a [ni3][ni2][ni1] GRID to a [no3][no2][no1] 3-D grid
RESAMP - RESAMPle the 1st dimension of a 2-dimensional function f(x1,x2)
...

Please type: suhelp or see Appendix B for the full text.

2.3

The Selfdoc - Program Self-Documentation

There are no Unix man pages for SU. To some people that seems to be a surprise (even
a disappointment) as this would seem to be a standard Unix feature, which Seismic Unix
should emulate. The package does contain an equivalent mechanism called a selfdoc or selfdocumentation feature.
This is a paragraph that is written into every program, and arranged so that if the name
of the program is typed on the commandline of a Unix terminal window, with no options or
redirects to or from files, the paragraph is printed to standard error (the screen).
For example:
% sustack
SUSTACK - stack adjacent traces having the same key header word
sustack <input >output [Optional parameters]
Required parameters:
none
Optional parameters:
key=cdp
normpow=1.0

verbose=0
Note:

header key word to stack on

each sample is divided by the
normpowth number of non-zero values
stacked (normpow=0 selects no division)
verbose = 1 echos information

The offset field is set to zero on the output traces.

Sushw can be used afterwards if this is not acceptable.

The first line indicates the name of the program sustack and a short description of what
the program does. This is the same line that appears for the listing of sustack in the suname
listing. The second line

CHAPTER 2. HELP FACILITIES

sustack <stdin >stdin [Optional parameters]

indicates how the program is to be typed on the commandline, with the words stdin and
stdout indicating that the input is from the standard input and standard output, respectively.
What this means in Unix terms is that the user could be inputting and outputting data via
diskfiles or the Unix redirect in < and redirect out > symbols, or via pipes |.
The paragraphs labeled by Required parameters: and Optional parameters indicate
the commandline parameters which are required for the operation of the program, and those
which are optional. The default values of the Optional parameters are given via the equality
are the values that the program assumes for these parameters when data are supplied, with no
additional commandline arguments given. For example: key=cdp indicates that sustack will
stack over the common depth point gather number field, cdp. (The shell script sukeyword
tells the choices of keyword that are available.)

2.4

SUDOC - List the Full Online Documentation of any Item

in SU

As has been alluded to in previous sections of this manual, there is a database of selfdocumentation items that is available for each main program, shell script, and library function. This
database exists in the directory $CWPROOT/src/doc and is composed of all of the selfdocumentation paragraphs of all of the items in SU.
Because not all all items with selfdocs are executable, an additional mechanism is necessary to see the selfdoc for these items. For example, information about the Abel transform routines, located in $CWPROOT/src/cwp/lib/abel.c (on the system at CWP, CWPROOT=/usr/local/cwp) is obtained via
% sudoc abel
In /usr/local/cwp/src/cwp/lib:
ABEL - Functions to compute the discrete ABEL transform:
abelalloc allocate and return a pointer to an Abel transformer
abelfree free an Abel transformer
abel compute the Abel transform
Function prototypes:
void *abelalloc (int n);
void abelfree (void *at);
void abel (void *at, float f[], float g[]);
Input:
ns number of samples in the data to be transformed
f[] array of floats, the function being transformed
Output:
at pointer to Abel transformer returned by abelalloc(int n)
g[] array of floats, the transformed data returned by
abel(*at,f[],g[])

2.4. SUDOC - LIST THE FULL ONLINE DOCUMENTATION OF ANY ITEM IN SU

Notes:
The Abel transform is defined by:
Infinity
g(y) = 2 Integral dx f(x)/sqrt(1-(y/x)^2)
|y|
Linear interpolation is used to define the continuous function f(x)
corresponding to the samples in f[]. The first sample f[0] corresponds
to f(x=0) and the sampling interval is assumed to be 1. Therefore, the
input samples correspond to 0 <= x <= n-1. Samples of f(x) for x > n-1
are assumed to be zero. These conventions imply that
g[0] = f[0] + 2*f[1] + 2*f[2] + ... + 2*f[n-1]
References:
Hansen, E. W., 1985, Fast Hankel transform algorithm: IEEE Trans. on
Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, v. ASSP-33, n. 3, p. 666-671.
(Beware of several errors in the equations in this paper!)
Authors:

Dave Hale and Lydia Deng, Colorado School of Mines, 06/01/90

Here we see that sudoc shows information about the routines, including their names, usage
information (via the function prototype), some theory of how the items are used, published
references, and finally the authors names.
As an another example, type:
% sugabor
SUGABOR -

Outputs a time-frequency representation of seismic data via

the Gabor transform-like multifilter analysis technique
presented by Dziewonski, Bloch and Landisman, 1969.

sugabor <stdin >stdout [optional parameters]

Required parameters:
if dt is not set in header, then dt is mandatory
Optional parameters:
dt=(from header)
fmin=0
fmax=NYQUIST
beta=3.0
band=.05*NYQUIST
alpha=beta/band^2
verbose=0

time sampling interval (sec)

minimum frequency of filter array (hz)
maximum frequency of filter array (hz)
ln[filter peak amp/filter endpoint amp]
filter bandwidth (hz)
filter width parameter
=1 supply additional info

Notes: This program produces a muiltifilter (as opposed to moving window)

representation of the instantaneous amplitude of seismic data in the
time-frequency domain. (With Gaussian filters, moving window and multifilter analysis can be shown to be equivalent.)
An input trace is passed through a collection of Gaussian filters

10

CHAPTER 2. HELP FACILITIES

to produce a collection of traces, each representing a discrete frequency

range in the input data. For each of these narrow bandwidth traces, a
quadrature trace is computed via the Hilbert transform. Treating the narrow
bandwidth trace and its quadrature trace as the real and imaginary parts
of a "complex" trace permits the "instantaneous" amplitude of each
narrow bandwidth trace to be compute. The output is thus a representation
of instantaneous amplitude as a function of time and frequency.
Some experimentation with the "band" parameter may necessary to produce
the desired time-frequency resolution. A good rule of thumb is to run
sugabor with the default value for band and view the image. If band is
too big, then the t-f plot will consist of stripes parallel to the frequency
axis. Conversely, if band is too small, then the stripes will be parallel
to the time axis.
Examples:
suvibro |
suvibro |
(because
may have
suvibro |

sugabor | suximage
sugabor | suxmovie n1= n2= n3=
suxmovie scales its amplitudes off of the first panel,
to experiment with the wclip and bclip parameters
sugabor | supsimage | ... ( your local PostScript utility)

If you compare this output to the output from typing:

% sudoc sugabor

You will see the same output as above, preceeded by a line showing the location of the
source code, and followed by the additional paragraphs:
Credits:
CWP: John Stockwell, Oct 1994
Algorithm:
This programs takes an input seismic trace and passes it
through a collection of truncated Gaussian filters in the frequency
domain.
The bandwidth of each filter is given by the parameter "band". The
decay of these filters is given by "alpha", and the number of filters
is given by nfilt = (fmax - fmin)/band. The result, upon inverse
Fourier transforming, is that nfilt traces are created, with each
trace representing a different frequency band in the original data.
For each of the resulting bandlimited traces, a quadrature (i.e. pi/2
phase shifted) trace is computed via the Hilbert transform. The
bandlimited trace constitutes a "complex trace", with the bandlimited
trace being the "real part" and the quadrature trace being the
"imaginary part". The instantaneous amplitude of each bandlimited
trace is then computed by computing the modulus of each complex trace.

2.5. SUFIND - FIND SU ITEMS WITH A GIVEN STRING

11

(See Taner, Koehler, and Sheriff, 1979, for a discussion of complex

trace analysis.
The final output for a given input trace is a map of instantaneous
amplitude as a function of time and frequency.
This is not a wavelet transform, but rather a redundant frame
representation.
References: Dziewonski, Bloch, and Landisman, 1969, A technique
for the analysis of transient seismic signals,
Bull. Seism. Soc. Am., 1969, vol. 59, no.1, pp.427-444.
Taner, M., T., Koehler, F., and Sheriff, R., E., 1979,
Complex seismic trace analysis, Geophysics, vol. 44,
pp.1041-1063.
Chui, C., K.,1992, Introduction to Wavelets, Academic
Press, New York.
Trace header fields accessed: ns, dt, trid, ntr
Trace header fields modified: tracl, tracr, d1, f2, d2, trid, ntr

There is more information in the sudoc listing, than in the selfdoc listing. The selfdoc
is intended as a quick reference, whereas the sudoc listing can provide additional information
that we do not necessarily want to see everytime we are, say, simply wanting to know what a
particular parameter means, for example.

2.5

SUFIND - Find SU Items with a Given String

The doc database (located in $CWPROOT/src/doc) may also be searched for specific strings,
or topics. The shell script sufind serves this purpose. If you type sufind with no options, you
will see
% sufind
sufind - get info from self-docs about SU programs
Usage: sufind [-v -n -P<command_pattern>] string
("string" can be an "egrep" pattern)
"sufind string" gives brief synopses
"sufind -v string" verbose hunt for relevant items
"sufind -n name_fragment" searches for command name
"sufind -P<pattern> string"
gives brief synopses by searching for "string" among
commands/libraries whose names match the "pattern"

showing that there is some sophisticated functionality which may help you find items of a
particular type in the SU package.
As an example of this, lets say that you are looking for programs that use the fast Fourier
transform algorithms in SU, type

12

CHAPTER 2. HELP FACILITIES

% sufind fft
FFTLAB - Motif-X based graphical 1D Fourier Transform
Usage:

fftlab

HANKEL - Functions to compute discrete Hankel transforms

hankelalloc
hankelfree

allocate and return a pointer to a Hankel transformer

free a Hankel transformer

PFAFFT - Functions to perform Prime Factor (PFA) FFTs, in place

npfa
npfar

return valid n for complex-to-complex PFA

return valid n for real-to-complex/complex-to-real PFA

SUAMP - output amp, phase, real or imag trace from

(frequency, x) domain data
suamp <stdin >stdout mode=amp
SUFFT - fft real time traces to complex frequency traces
suftt <stdin >sdout sign=1

SUFRAC -- take general (fractional) time derivative or integral of

data, plus a phase shift. Input is TIME DOMAIN data.
sufrac power= [optional parameters] <indata >outdata
SUIFFT - fft complex frequency traces to real time traces
suiftt <stdin >sdout sign=-1

SUMIGPS - MIGration by Phase Shift with turning rays

sumigps <stdin >stdout [optional parms]

SUMIGTK - MIGration via T-K domain method for common-midpoint stacked data
sumigtk <stdin >stdout dxcdp= [optional parms]

SURADON - forward generalized Radon transform from (x,t) -> (p,tau) space.
suradon <stdin >stdout [Optional Parameters]

2.5. SUFIND - FIND SU ITEMS WITH A GIVEN STRING

13

For more information type: "program_name <CR>"

The final line of this output ends with a symbol meant to indicate that the user is to type a
carriage return.1 As you can see, there is a mixed collection of programs which are either demos
of the CWP/SU prime factor fft routines (pfafft), libraries containing the routines, or programs
that use fft routines.

2.5.1

Getting information about SU programs

A more specific example would be to use sufind to look for dip moveout (DMO) programs:
% sufind dmo
SUDMOFK - DMO via F-K domain (log-stretch) method for common-offset gathers
sudmofk <stdin >stdout cdpmin= cdpmax= dxcdp= noffmix= [...]

SUDMOTX - DMO via T-X domain (Kirchhoff) method for common-offset gathers
sudmotx <stdin >stdout cdpmin= cdpmax= dxcdp= noffmix= [optional parms]
SUDMOVZ - DMO for V(Z) media for common-offset gathers
sudmovz <stdin >stdout cdpmin= cdpmax= dxcdp= noffmix= [...]
SUFDMOD2 - Finite-Difference MODeling (2nd order) for acoustic wave equation
sufdmod2 <vfile >wfile nx= nz= tmax= xs= zs= [optional parameters]

SUSTOLT - Stolt migration for stacked data or common-offset gathers

sustolt <stdin >stdout cdpmin= cdpmax= dxcdp= noffmix= [...]

The last two hits are spurious, but we see that three DMO programs have been found.
Now use the self-doc facility to get more information about sudmofk:
% sudmofk
SUDMOFK - DMO via F-K domain (log-stretch) method for common-offset gathers
sudmofk <stdin >stdout cdpmin= cdpmax= dxcdp= noffmix= [...]
Required Parameters:
cdpmin
cdpmax
dxcdp
noffmix
1

minimum cdp (integer number) for which to apply DMO

maximum cdp (integer number) for which to apply DMO
distance between adjacent cdp bins (m)
number of offsets to mix (see notes)

The phrase carriage return refers to an older technology, the typewriter. Ask your parents (or grandparents)
for further details.

14

CHAPTER 2. HELP FACILITIES

Optional Parameters:
tdmo=0.0
vdmo=1500.0
sdmo=1.0
fmax=0.5/dt
verbose=0

times corresponding to rms velocities in vdmo (s)

rms velocities corresponding to times in tdmo (m/s)
DMO stretch factor; try 0.6 for typical v(z)
maximum frequency in input traces (Hz)
=1 for diagnostic print

Notes:
Input traces should be sorted into common-offset gathers. One commonoffset gather ends and another begins when the offset field of the trace
headers changes.
The cdp field of the input trace headers must be the cdp bin NUMBER, NOT
the cdp location expressed in units of meters or feet.
The number of offsets to mix (noffmix) should typically equal the ratio of
the shotpoint spacing to the cdp spacing. This choice ensures that every
cdp will be represented in each offset mix. Traces in each mix will
contribute through DMO to other traces in adjacent cdps within that mix.
The tdmo and vdmo arrays specify a velocity function of time that is
used to implement a first-order correction for depth-variable velocity.
The times in tdmo must be monotonically increasing.
For each offset, the minimum time at which a non-zero sample exists is
used to determine a mute time. Output samples for times earlier than this
mute time will be zeroed. Computation time may be significantly reduced
if the input traces are zeroed (muted) for early times at large offsets.
Trace header fields accessed:

ns, dt, delrt, offset, cdp.

By using sufind in conjunction with the selfdoc feature (or sudoc), and choosing smart strings
to search on, it is possible to find a great deal of detailed information about SUs facilities.

2.6

GENDOCS - An Instant LaTeX Document Containing All

Selfdocs

The ultimate shell script for exploiting the sudoc database is gendocs. Typing:
% gendocs -o

will generate the 528+ page document selfdocs.tex, which is in LaTeX format. You may
process this using LaTeX on your system. Obviously, you must really be sure that you want to
print this document, considering its size. However, it does contain all of the self-documentations
for all CWP/SU programs, library routines, and shell scripts, and may be a useful one-to-a-lab
type reference.

2.7

Suhelp.html

Long-time SU contributor, Dr. Christopher L. Liner of the University of Tulsa, created the
following document which may be accessed from the CWP/SU web site, or from his location

2.7. SUHELP.HTML

15

of:
http://www.mcs.utulsa.edu/~cll/suhelp/suhelp.html
SeismicUn*x
Version 33 (5 April 1999)
An HTML Help Browser
* This is a help browser for the SeismicUn*x free software package
developed and maintained by the Center for Wave Phenomena at the
Colorado School of Mines. The SU project is directed at CWP by John
Stockwell.
* The author of this help facility is Dr. Christopher Liner (an alumnus
of CWP) who is a faculty member in the Department of Geosciences at The
University of Tulsa.
* Last updated January 16, 1998

o The arrangement below is by funtionality

o Clicking on a program name pulls up the selfdoc for that item
o Your web browsers Find capability is useful if you have a
fragment in mind (e.g. sort or nmo)
o While programs may logically apply to more than one catagory
below, each program appears only once
----------------------------------------------------------------------1. Functional Listing
1. Data Compression
2. Editing, Sorting and Manipulation
3. Filtering, Transforms and Attributes
4. Gain, NMO, Stack and Standard Processes
5. Graphics
6. Import/Export
7. Migration and Dip Moveout
8. Simulation and Model Building
9. Utilities
* Alphabetical name list
* List is for scanning only, it
does not pull up the selfdoc of
a selected item.

* 280 items
* For further info on an
interesting item use your
browsers find command, then
follow the link

-----------------------------------------------------------------------Data Compression
Discrete Cosine Transform
* dctcomp

* dctuncomp

16

CHAPTER 2. HELP FACILITIES

Packing

Wavelet Transform

*
*
*
*
*
*

supack1
supack2
wpc1comp2
wpccompress
wptcomp
wtcomp

*
*
*
*
*
*

suunpack1
suunpack2
wpc1uncomp2
wpcuncompress
wptuncomp
wtuncomp

Go to top
...

To see the full listing see Appendix B or point your web browser to the http address above.

2.8

Demos

The SU package contains a suite of demos, which are shell scripts located in the directory
$CWPROOT/src/demos.
The instructions for accessing the demos are located in the $CWPROOT/src/demos/README
The Making Data demos shows the basics of making synthetic data shot gathers and
common offset sections using susynlv. Particular attention is paid to illustrating good
display labeling.
The Filtering/Sufilter demo illustrates some real data processing to eliminate ground roll
and first arrivals. The demos in the Filtering subdirectories give instructions for accessing
the data from the CWP ftp site.
The Deconvolution demo uses simple synthetic spike traces to illustrate both dereverberation and spiking decon using supef and other tools. The demos include commands for
systematically examining the effect of the filter parameters using loops.
The Sorting Traces Tutorial is an interactive script that reinforces some of the basic UNIX
and SU lore discussed in this document. The interactivity is limited to allowing you to set
the pace. Such tutorials quickly get annoying, but we felt that one such was needed to
cover some issues that didnt fit into our standard demo format. There is also a standard,
but less complete, demo on this topic.
The next step is to activate the Selecting Traces Demo. Then proceed to the NMO Demo.
Beyond that, visit the Demo directories that interest you. The demos directory tree is still
under active developmentplease let us know if the demos are helpful and how they can be
improved.

2.9

Other Help Mechanisms

SUKEYWORD - List SU Header Field Key Words Many of the SU programs that draw
on header field information have the parameter key= listed in their selfdocs, with the
reference to keywords. The SU keywords are based on the SEGY trace header fields.
(This will be explained later, in the sections on tape reading and data format conversion.)
To find out what these header fields are, and what they stand for in the SU data type,
type:

2.9. OTHER HELP MECHANISMS

17

% sukeyword -o

Please see Appendix B for the full text of the output. See Section 3.5.3 for details on
the usage of this command. A number of programs sort data, window data, and display
data by making use of the values in the SU header fields, making sukeyword an oft-used
utility.
The essence of SU usage is the construction of shell programs to carry out coordinated
data processing. The su/examples directory contains a number of such programs. By
the way, the terms shell scripts, shell programs, shell files, and shells, are used
interchangeably in the UNIX literature.
The faq directory contains a growing collection of answers to frequently asked questions
about SU, including detailed information about tape reading, data format questions, and
seismic processing tips.
The text book, Theory of Seismic Imaging, by John A. Scales, Samizdat Press, 1994, is
available in our anonymous ftp site in both 300 and 400 dots per inch PostScript format: pub/samizdat/texts/imaging/imaging_300dpi.ps.Z or imaging_400dpi.ps.Z.
The exercises in this text make extensive use of SU.
You should not hesitate to look at the source code itself. Section 10.2 explains the key SU
coding idioms. Please let us know if you discover any inconsistencies between the source and
our documentation of it. We also welcome suggestions for improving the comments and style
of our codes. The main strength of the SU package is that it is a source-code product. No
commercial package can give you the source code, for obvious reasons.
You may direct email to: john@dix.mines.edu if you have comments, questions, suggestions
regarding SU, or if you have your own SU-style programs to contribute to the package.

18

CHAPTER 2. HELP FACILITIES

Chapter 3

Core Seismic Unix Programs

The core of the Seismic Unix program set performs a broad collection of tasks, which may be
viewed as being common to a large collection of research and processing disciplines. Many,
however, are purely seismic in nature, and are indicated as such in the text.
Some of these tasks include
input/output issues
data format conversion,
setting, viewing, and editing trace header fields
viewing SU data,
windowing, sorting, and editing the data.
general operations,
transform and filtering operations,
seismic operations on SU data.
It is the intent of the chapters that follow is to deal with many of these issues. Please note
that more detailed information about any of the programs discussed can be obtained by typing
the name of the program on the commandline with no arguments,
% programname

or by typing:
% sudoc programname

to see the selfdoc information.

This chapter does not cover all SU programs, but just a sufficient number such that a person
with some Unix experience can get started with the package. Once you get the idea of how
SU is used, then you may draw on the help facilities to discover additional programs in the
package.
19

20

CHAPTER 3. CORE SEISMIC UNIX PROGRAMS

3.1

Reading and Writing Data to and from Tapes

Reading tapes is more of an art than a science. This is true in general, and is especially true for
SU. The variability of hardware formats, as well as the variability of data format types, makes
the creation of a general tape reading utility a challenging, if not impossible, proposition.
The following programs are useful for the specialized data input and output tasks related
to geophysical applications, as well as to the internal SU data format
BHEDTOPAR - convert a Binary tape HEaDer file to PAR file format
DT1TOSU - Convert ground-penetrating radar data in the Sensors & Software X.dt1
GPR format to SU format
SEGDREAD - read an SEG-D tape
SEGYCLEAN - zero out unassigned portion of header
SEGYREAD - read an SEG-Y tape
SEGYHDRS - make SEG-Y ascii and binary headers for segywrite
SEGYWRITE - write an SEG-Y tape
SETBHED - SET the fields in a SEGY Binary tape HEaDer file
SUADDHEAD - put headers on bare traces and set the tracl and ns fields
SUSTRIP - remove the SEGY headers from the traces
SUPASTE - paste existing SEGY headers on existing data
The following programs are useful for general data input, output, and data type conversion,
which may also find use in tape reading,
A2B - convert ascii floats to binary
B2A - convert binary floats to ascii
FTNSTRIP - convert Fortran floats to C-style floats
H2B - convert 8 bit hexidecimal floats to binary
RECAST - RECAST data type (convert from one data type to another)
TRANSP - TRANSPose an n1 by n2 element matrix

3.1. READING AND WRITING DATA TO AND FROM TAPES

3.1.1

21

The SEGY format and the SU data format

The data format that is expected by all programs in the CWP/SU package whose names begin
with the letters su (with the exception of the program subset), consists of SEGY traces
written in the native binary format of the machine you are running the programs on. To
understand what this phrase means, we must understand what the SEGY standard is.
In the early 1980s, the most common data storage format was SEG-Y. This is the Society
of Exploration Geophysicists Y format which is described in the SEGs publication Digital Tape
Standards. The format is still widely used, today, though there is no guarantee that the format
is used by the book.
The SEGY data format consists of 3 parts. The first part is a 3200 byte EBCDIC card image
header which contains 40 cards (i.e. 40 lines of text with 80 characters per line) worth of text
data describing the tape. The second part is a 400 byte binary header containing information
about the contents of the tape reel. The third portion of the SEG-Y format consists of the
actual seismic traces. Each trace has a 240 byte trace header . The data follow, written in one
of 4 possible 32 formats in IBM floating point notation as defined in IBM Form GA 22-6821.
(Note, this IBM format is not the common IEEE format found on modern IBM PCs.)
The SU data format is based on the trace portion of the SEGY format. The primary
difference between the SEGY traces and SU traces is that the data portion of the SU format
are floats, written in the native binary float format of the machine you are running SU on. SU
data consists of the SEGY traces only! The ebcdic and binary reel headers are not preserved
in the SU format, so simply redirecting in a SEGY file will not work with any SU program.
To convert SEGY data into a form that can be used by SU programs, you will need to use
segyread.

3.1.2

SEGYREAD - Getting SEG-Y data into SU

The program segyread is used to convert data from the SEGY format to the SU format. If
you type:
% segyread

You will see the selfdoc for this program.

When reading a SEGY tape, or datafile, you will need to be aware of the byte-order (endian)
of the machine you are running on. The so-called big-endian or high-byte IEEE format is
found on SGI, SUN, IBM RS6000, and all Motorola chip-based systems. The little-endian
or low-byte systems are systems that are based on Intel and Dec chips. You will also need to
know what Unix device your tape drive is.
A typical execution of segyread on a big-endian machine, looks like this:
% segyread tape=/dev/rmt0 verbose=1 endian=1 > data.su

More often you will have to use the following

% segyread tape=/dev/rmt0 verbose=1 endian=1 | segyclean > data.su

for reading a tape on a big-endian platform.

There are optional header fields (bytes 181-240) in the SEGY trace headers. There is no
standard for what may go in these fields, so many people have items that they place in these
fields for their own purposes. SU is no exception. There are several parameters used by SU

22

CHAPTER 3. CORE SEISMIC UNIX PROGRAMS

graphics programs that may be stored in these fields. The program segyclean zeros out the
values of the optional header fields so that SU graphics programs dont become confused by
this information.
There are additional issues, such as whether or not your device is buffered or unbufferd (i.e.
9 track 1/2 reel tape, or 8mm Exabyte) tape which may have to be experimented with when
you actually try to read a tape. Also, if you are trying to read a tape on a different system
than the one it was made on, you may simply not be able to read the tape.
The most common problem with reading tapes is matching the density that the tape was
written in, with the tapedrive that the tape is being read on. Some systems, for example
Silicon Graphics (SGI) systems, have many tape devices, which support different hardware
configurations and tape densities. Other systems, most notably recent versions of Linux have
an improved version of the Unix command mt which has a setdensities option. In either
case, it is common for tapes to be made using the default settings of a tape drive, or its default
densities.
As a last resort in all tape reading situations, it is often possible to use the Unix device-todevice copying program dd to make an image of the entire tape on disk
% dd if=/dev/rmtx of=filename bs=32767 conv=noerror

where /dev/rmtx is replaced with your tapedrive device and filename is some file name you
choose. If this works, then the next step is to try using segyread as above, with tape=filename.
If dd fails, then it is likely that the hardware format of your tapedrive is not compatible with
your tape.
Of course, the best way to prevent tape reading problems is to make sure that you talk to
the person who is writing the tape before they write it. On SGI systems, in particular, there
are so many possible choices for the type of tape format, that the person who is making the
tape must have information about the platform that the tape is intended to be read on, before
they can make a tape that is guaranteed to be readable.

3.1.3

SEG-Y abuses

Unfortunately, there are formats which are called SEGY but which are not true to the SEGs
standards for SEGY. One common variation is to honor most of the SEGY convention, but
have the traces be in an IEEE format.
Such data would be read via:
% segyread tape=/dev/rmt0 verbose=1 endian=1 conv=0 | segyclean > data.su

where the conv=0 tells the program not to attempt the IBM to float conversion.
DOS SEGY
There is also a DOS SEGY format which is similar to the previous format, with the exception
that the traces and headers are all written in a little-endian format. On a big-endian machine,
the command to read such a dataset would be
% segyread tape=/dev/rmt0 verbose=1 endian=0 conv=0 | segyclean > data.su

will read the data. Note, that endian=0 is set to swap the bytes. (All of the bytes, header and
data are in the swapped format.) On a little-endian machine, the procedure is

3.1. READING AND WRITING DATA TO AND FROM TAPES

23

% segyread tape=/dev/rmt0 verbose=1 endian=1 conv=0 | segyclean > data.su

with endian=1, in this case preventing byteswapping.

In each case, if we had a diskfile with some filename, we would use tape=filename.
Landmark BCM2D format in SEISWORKS
Commercial seismic software can be sources of non-standard SEGY formats. In addition to
non-standard usage of the official header fields, commercial variations on SEGY may employ
definitions of parts of the optional SEGY header fields.
A remedy for this problem, supplied by Matthias Imhoff of Virginia Tech, is a remapping
feature in segyread, which allows nonstandard fields to be remapped into compatible locations
in the SU header. The options remap= allows the destination SU header fields to be specified,
while byte= specifies the byte location in the SEGY trace header, and its data type.
For the example of Landmark BCM2D format, header fields 73 and 77 are floats, but these
are ints in the standard SEGY format and are hence also ints in the SU format. BCM2D also
has to header fields set as longs at bytes 181 and 185. The following usage of segyread
% segyread tape=... remap=d1,d2,gelev,selev byte=73f,77f,181l,185l > ...

The floats at 73 and 77 are mapped to d1 and d2, while the long integers at 181 and 185
are mapped to gelev and selev, which are integers in the SU format. By selecting compatible
destination fields, no precision is lost.

3.1.4

SEGYWRITE - Writing an SEGY Tape or Diskfile

The companion program to segyread is segywrite. This program permits data to be written
either to a tape or a diskfile in a number of variations on the SEGY format. This program is
useful for putting data into a form that can be read by commercial seismic packages. Before
showing examples of how segywrite is used, there are several preprocessing steps that must
be discussed in preparation for actually writing a tape.

3.1.5

SEGYHDRS - make SEG-Y ascii and binary headers for segywrite

To write a tape in exactly the SEGY format as specified by the SEGs Digital Tape Standards
book, you will need to supply the ASCII and binary tape reel header files which will become the
EBCDIC and binary tape reel headers in the SEGY tape or file. These are the files header
and binary created by segywrite.
If you dont have the binary and header files, then you must create them with the
program segyhdrs (pronounced SEG Y headers) The command
% segyhdrs < data.su

will write the files header and binary in the current working directory. As an example,
make some test data with suplane and then run segyhdrs on it
% suplane > data.su
% segyhdrs < data.su

You will see the files binary and header appear in your current working directory.
The program has options that will allow you to set the values of binary header fields. These
fields may be seen by typing:

24

CHAPTER 3. CORE SEISMIC UNIX PROGRAMS

% sukeyword jobid
int jobid;

/* job identification number */

int lino;

/* line number (only one line per reel) */

int reno;

/* reel number */

short ntrpr;

/* number of data traces per record */

short nart;

/* number of auxiliary traces per record */

unsigned short hdt; /* sample interval in micro secs for this reel */
unsigned short dto; /* same for original field recording */
...

where jobid is the first binary header field.

The file header is an ASCII file which may be edited with a normal text editor. You can
put anything in there, as long as the format is 40 lines of 80 characters each. Segywrite will
automatically convert this program The default header file created by segyhdrs looks like this
C
C
C
C
C
C
...
C
C

3.1.6

This tape was made at the

Center for Wave Phenomena
Colorado School of Mines
Golden, CO, 80401

BHEDTOPAR, SETBHED - Editing the binary header file

The binary header file must be converted to an ASCII form, to be edited. The program
bhedtopar permits the binary file to be written in the form of a parfile
% bhedtopar

< binary outpar=binary.par

which for the case of the header file created for the test SU data appears as follows
jobid=1
lino=1
reno=1
ntrpr=0
nart=0
hdt=4000
...

The values that are assigned to the various header files may be edited, and be reloaded into the
header file via setbhed
% setbhed bfile=binary par=binary.par

3.2. DATA FORMAT CONVERSION

25

Individual header field values may also be set. For example

% setbhed bfile=binary par=binary.par lino=3

which uses the contents of binary.par but with the field lino set to 3.
Finally, the tape may be written via a command sequence like this
% segywrite tape=/dev/rmtx verbose=1 < data.su

taking care to note that the files header and binary are in the current working directory.
You may use different names for these files, if you wish. Segywrite has a bfile= and an
hfile= option to permit you to input the files by the different names you choose.

3.1.7

SEGDREAD - Other SEG formats

There are other SEG formats (SEG-A, SEG-B, SEG-X, SEG-C, SEG-D, SEG-1, and SEG-2).
Of these, SEG-D, SEG-B, and SEG-2 are the types that you will most commonly encounter.
There is a segdread program which supports only 1 of the vast number of variations on SEG-D.
In the directory $CWPROOT/Third Party/ is a seg2segy conversion program which may
be used to convert SEG-2 format to SEG-Y. Future plans are to create a seg2read program,
which will be similar to segyread and segdread.

3.1.8

DT1TOSU - Non-SEG tape formats

Currently, there is only one non-SEG tape format that is completely supported in the SU
package, and two others which are supported through third-party codes which have not yet been
integrated into the package. This is the Sensors & Software DT1 format, via dt1tosu, which is
a GPR (ground penetrating radar) format. In the $CWPROOT/src/Third Party directory are
two additional non-SEG conversion programs, these are segytoseres and bison2su. Future
plans include incorporating each of these codes into the main CWP/SU package.

3.2

Data Format conversion

Often, it is necessary to transfer data from other systems, or to input data which may be in
a variety of formats. A number of tools and tricks are available in SU for dealing with these
issues.
The following programs may be useful for such conversion problems
A2B - convert ascii floats to binary
B2A - convert binary floats to ascii
FTNSTRIP - convert Fortran floats to C-style floats
FTNUNSTRIP - convert C-style floats to Fortran-style floats
H2B - convert 8 bit hexidecimal floats to binary
RECAST - RECAST data type (convert from one data type to another)
TRANSP - TRANSPose an n1 by n2 element matrix

26

CHAPTER 3. CORE SEISMIC UNIX PROGRAMS

FARITH - File ARITHmetic perform simple arithmetic with binary files
SUADDHEAD - put headers on bare traces and set the tracl and ns fields
SUSTRIP - remove the SEGY headers from the traces
SUPASTE - paste existing SEGY headers on existing data
SWAPBYTES - SWAP the BYTES of various data types
SUSWAPBYTES - SWAP the BYTES in SU data to convert data from big endian to
little endian byte order, and vice versa
The purpose of this section is to discuss situations where these programs may be used.

3.2.1

A2B and B2A - ASCII to Binary, Binary to ASCII

Of all of the formats of data, the most transportable (and most space consuming) is ASCII.
No matter what system you are working on, it is possible to transport ASCII data to and from
that system. Also, because text editors support ASCII, it is usually possible to data entry and
data editing in the simplest of text editors.
Such data probably come in a multicolumn format, separated either by spaces or tabs. To
convert such a, say 5 column, dataset into binary floats, type:
% a2b < data.ascii n1=5 > data.binary

The reverse operation is

% b2a < data.binary n1=5 > data.ascii

3.2.2

FTNSTRIP - Importing Fortran Data to C

Often, because Fortran is a popular language in seismic data processing, data may be obtained
that was either created or processed in some way with Fortran. Binary data in Fortran are
separated by beginning-of-record and end-of-record delimiters. Binary data created by C programs do not have any such delimiters. To use Fortran data in a C program requires that the
Fortran labels be stripped off, via
ftnstrip < fortdata > cdata

This will produce C-style floats, most of the time. The program assumes that each record of
fortran data is preceded and followed by an integer listing the size of the record in bytes. There
have been fortran data types which have had only one or the other of these integer markers,
but having both a beginning-of-record (BOR) and an end-of-record (EOR) markers seems to
be standard today.

3.2. DATA FORMAT CONVERSION

3.2.3

27

Going from C to Fortran

It is fairly easy to transport data made with Fortran code to C, however, it may not be so easy
to go the other way. On the SGI Power Challenge, it is possible to read a file of C-floats called
infile via, open and read statements that look like:
OPEN(99,file=infile,form=system)
DO i=1,number
READ(99) tempnumber
Array(i)=tempnumber
END DO
CLOSE(99)

The statement form=system does not work on all machines, however, as it is likely that
this is not standard Fortran. The general format command to read in binary is form=unformatted.
This may not work on other systems, (for example, SUN). Indeed, it may not be generally guaranteed that you can read binary files in Fortran that have been created with a C-programs (as
in SU).
If you have problems with binary and the input files are not too big you could convert to
ASCII (using b2a) and use formatted I/0
OPEN(99,file=infile)
DO i=1,number
READ(99,*) tempnumber
Array(i)=tempnumber
END DO
CLOSE(99)

FTNUNSTRIP - convert C binary floats to Fortran style floats

However, another possibility is to make fake Fortran floats with a C-program. Such a program
is ftnunstrip.
This program assumes that the record length is constant throughout the input and output
files. In fortran code reading these floats, the following implied do loop syntax would be used:
DO i=1,n2 READ (10) (someARRAY(j), j=1,n1) END DO Here n1 is the number of samples
per record, n2 is the number of records, 10 is some default file (fort.10, for example) which is
opened as form=unformatted. Here someArray(j) is an array dimensioned to size n1.
Please note that the Fortran style of having BOR and EOR markers is smart, if used
properly, but is stupid if used incorrectly. The Fortran READ statement finds out from the
BOR marker how many bytes will follow, reads the number of values specified, keeping track
of the number of bytes. When it finishes reading, it compares the number of bytes read to
the number of bytes listed in the EOR value, and can effectively trap errors in bytes read, or
premature EOR.
Because there is an additional sizeof(int) (usually 4 bytes) at the beginning and end of
every record, it is smart to have as few records as is necessary. The worst case scenario is to

28

CHAPTER 3. CORE SEISMIC UNIX PROGRAMS

have every value of data be a record, meaning that the size of the file could be 2/3 BOR and
EOR markers and 1/3 data!

3.2.4

H2B - Importing 8 Bit Hexidecimal

The issue of converting 8 bit hexidecimal may seem to be one that would not come up very
often. However 8 bit hex is a common format for bitmapped images (grayscale PostScript) and
if you wish to take a scanned image and turn it into floats for further processing, then it will
come up.1
If you have a scanned image, written as a 256 level grayscale bitmapped PostScript image,
then the bitmap portion is in 8 bit hex. By removing all of the PostScript commands, and
leaving only the bitmap then the command
% h2b < hexdata > floatdata

will convert the bitmap into a form that can be viewed and processed by programs in the
CWP/SU package.

3.2.5

RECAST - Changing Binary Data Types

Of course, C supports a variety of types, and instead of having a bunch of program to convert
each type into every other type, there is a program called recast that will do the job for a
large collection of these types.
Types supported by recast for input and output:
float - floating point
double - double precision
int - (signed) integer
char - character
uchar - unsigned char
short - short integer
long - long integer
ulong - unsigned long integer
For example, to convert integers to floats
% recast < data.ints

in=int out=float > data.floats

The name of this program derives from the fact that an explicit type conversion in the Clanguage is called a cast.
1
This issue came up originally, when a student had destroyed an original dataset, by accident, but only had
a bit-mapped PostScript image of the data. Using h2b it was possible to recover the data from the PostScript
file.

3.2. DATA FORMAT CONVERSION

3.2.6

29

TRANSP - Transposing Binary Data

In the course of any of the operations, it is often necessary to transpose datasets. In particular,
data which are represented in a multi-column ASCII format, will likely need to be transposed
after being converted from ASCII to binary with a2b. The reason for this is that it is convenient
to have the fast dimension of the data be the time (or depth) dimension for seismic purposes.
Our example above was a 5 column dataset, which you might think of as 5 seismic traces,
with the same number of samples in each trace, side by side in the file. The processing sequence
% a2b < data.ascii n1=5 > data.binary

will result in a file with the fast dimension being in the trace number direction, rather than the
number of samples direction The additional processing sequence
% transp < data.binary n1=5 > data.transp

will put the data in the desirable form of the fast dimension being in the number of samples
direction, so that each trace is accessed successively.

3.2.7

FARITH - Performs simple arithmetic on binary data.

It is often necessary to perform arithmetical operations on files, or between two files of binary
data. The program farith has been provided for many of these tasks.
Some of the tasks for single files supported by farith include
scaling value,
polarity reversal,
signum function,
absolute value,
exponential,
logarithm,
square root,
square,
inverse (punctuated),
inverse of square (punctuated),
inverse of square root (punctuated).
Binary operations (operations involving two files) include value by value
addition,
subtraction,
multiplication,

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CHAPTER 3. CORE SEISMIC UNIX PROGRAMS

division,
cartesian product.

Seismic operations (which assume files consist of wavespeeds) include

slowness perturbation (difference of inverses of files),
sloth perturbation (difference of inverses of files),
Examples of using farith are
% farith in=data.binary op=pinv out=data.out.bin
% farith in=data1.binary in2=data2.binary op=add > data.out2.bin

3.3

Trace Header Manipulation

The data format of SU inherits the seismic trace headers from SEGY data. If your data are
not SEGY, but are created by conversion from some other type, there is a minimum collection
of headers that you will need to set, for the data to be compatible with commonly used SU
programs.
The issues of interest in this section are:
adding trace headers,
removing trace headers,
pasting trace headers back on,

3.3.1

SUADDHEAD - Adding SU Headers to Binary Data

Once data have been put in the correct form, that is to say, an array of C-style floats organized
with the fast dimension in the direction of increasing sample number per trace, then it is
necessary to add headers so that these data may be accessible to other SU programs.
If the data are SEGY, SEGD, DT1, or Bison/Geometrics data, read from a tape or diskfile,
then the programs segyread, segdread, dt1tosu, or bison2su will have set the trace header
values so that the output will be SU data.
For data read from some other means, such as an ASCII dataset by a2b, headers have to
be added, this is done by using suaddhead. If our dataset consists of a file of binary C-style
floats with, say 1024 samples per trace, then the command sequence
% suaddhead < data.bin ns=1024 > data.su

will yield the SU datafile data.su.

3.3.2

SUSTRIP - Strip SU headers SU data

The inverse operation to suaddhead is sustrip. Sometimes, you will have data with SU headers
on it, but you may want to export the data to another program that does not understand SU
headers. The command sequence
% sustrip < data.su head=data.headers >data.bin

will remove the SU headers and save them in the file data.headers.

3.4. BYTE SWAPPING

3.3.3

31

SUPASTE - Paste SU Headers on to Binary Data

Having performed an operation on the binary data, we may want to paste the headers back on.
This is done with supaste. The command sequence
% supaste < data.bin head=data.headers >data.su

will paste the headers contained in data.headers back on to the data.

3.4

Byte Swapping

Even the best of human intentions can be circumvented. This is the case with the IEEE
floating point data format. The implementation of the IEEE standard by chip manufacturers
has resulted in two types of commonly encountered data types. These are called big-endian
(high-byte) or little-endian (low-byte) types. Little-endian machines are Intel or Dec-based,
whereas big-endian is every other chip manufacturer.
Transporting data (either regular floating point, or SU data) requires that the bytes be
swapped, in order for the data to be read. Two issues are necessary to address. These are the
issues of swapping the bytes in
normal floating point data,
SU data.
Two programs are provided to perform these tasks. These are
SWAPBYTES - SWAP the BYTES of various data types
SUSWAPBYTES - SWAP the BYTES in SU data to convert data from big endian

3.4.1

SWAPBYTES - Swap the Bytes of Binary (non-SU) Data

If you transport binary data (data without SU headers) between platforms of a different endian (that is to say, the IEEE byte-order), from the one you are working on, then you will
have to swap the bytes to make use of that data.
This problem arises because the order of the mantissa and exponent of binary data comes in
two different possible order under the IEEE data standard. The so-called big-endian or highbyte IEEE format is found on SGI, SUN, IBM RS6000, and all Motorola chip-based systems.
The little-endian or low-byte systems are systems that are based on Intel and Dec chips.
The program swapbytes is provided to do this for a variety of data format types, but not
SU data. For example,
% swapbytes < data.bin in=float

>data.swap

will swap the bytes in a file of containing C-style floating point numbers.

3.4.2

SUSWAPBYTES - Swap the Bytes of SU Data

If you transport SU data (data with SU headers) between systems, you have to swap both the
data and the SU headers. The program suswapbytes is provided to do this. The command
sequence

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CHAPTER 3. CORE SEISMIC UNIX PROGRAMS

% suswapbytes < data.su format=0 > data.su.swapped

will swap data in the SU format from a machine of the reverse endian to the byte order of your
system.
The command sequence
% suswapbytes < data.su format=1 > data.su.swapped

will swap data in the SU format that is in your systems byte order to the opposite byte order.
You would use this if you were transporting your SU data from you system to another system
of the opposite byte order.

3.5

Setting, Editing, and Viewing Trace Header Fields

Seismic data can have a large number of parameters associated with it. In SU data (following
the example of the SEG-Y format) the values of these parameters are stored in the header fields
of the traces. There are a number of programs which access the header fields allowing you to
set, view, and modify those fields for a variety of purposes.
The tasks of interest are
adding SU headers,
stripping SU headers off of data and then pasting them back on,
identifying SU keywords,
viewing the range of SU header values,
setting specified SU header fields,
computing a third header field from the values of two given fields,
getting the values of header fields,
editing specific header fields,
all of which are necessary, and may come under the heading of geometry setting.
The following list of programs will be discussed in this chapter
SUADDHEAD - put headers on bare traces and set the tracl and ns fields
SUSTRIP - remove the SEGY headers from the traces
SUPASTE - paste existing SEGY headers on existing data
SUKEYWORD guide to SU keywords in segy.h
SURANGE - get max and min values for non-zero header entries
SUSHW - Set one or more Header Words using trace number, mod and integer divide to
compute the header word values or input the header word values from a file
SUCHW - Change Header Word using one or two header word fields

3.5. SETTING, EDITING, AND VIEWING TRACE HEADER FIELDS

33

SUGETHW - Get the Header Word(s) in SU Data

SUEDIT - examine segy diskfiles and edit headers
SUXEDIT - examine segy diskfiles and edit headers
Some of these items were discussed in the previous section, but for completeness, lets recap
what these programs do, with a bit more information.

3.5.1

SUADDHEAD - add SU (SEGY-style) Trace Headers

To add headers to a datafile consisting of C-style binary floating point numbers do:
% suaddhead < data.bin ns=1024 > data.su

or for some other type, such as integers, use recast

% recast < data.ints in=int out=float | suaddhead ns=1024 > data.su

Here we have used a pipe | to cascade the processing flow.

If the data are integers were originally from Fortran, then this is a likely processing flow:
% ftnstrip < data.fortran | recast in=int out=float | suaddhead ns=1024 > data.su

Other variations are obviously possible.

3.5.2

SUSTRIP and SUPASTE - Strip and Paste SU Headers

% sustrip < data.su head=data.head > data.strip

... other processing that doesnt change the number of traces ...
% supaste < datanew.strip head=data.head > datanew.su

See the discussion of sustrip and supaste above.

3.5.3

SUKEYWORD - See SU Keywords

The next 5 programs that are discussed in this section have the option key= in their selfdocs
and the reference to the trace header field keywords. As has been discussed in Chapter 2,
sukeyword is used to determine just what these header keywords are. Typing:
% sukeyword -o

shows this list. (You may also see this list in Appendix B.) However, of the 80+ fields which
are defined in the SU header, only a relatively small subset are used most of the time. These
fields are given by the sukeyword listing as
int tracl; /* trace sequence number within line */
int tracr; /* trace sequence number within reel */
int cdp; /* CDP ensemble number */
int cdpt; /* trace number within CDP ensemble */
...
short trid; /* trace identification code:
... 1 = seismic data
int offset; /* distance from source point to receiver

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CHAPTER 3. CORE SEISMIC UNIX PROGRAMS

...
int sx; /* X source coordinate */
int sy; /* Y source coordinate */
int gx; /* X group coordinate */
int gy; /* Y group coordinate */
short counit; /* coordinate units code:
...
short delrt; /* delay recording time, time in ms between
initiation time of energy source and time
when recording of data samples begins
(for deep water work if recording does not
start at zero time) */
unsigned short ns; /* number of samples in this trace */
unsigned short dt; /* sample interval; in micro-seconds */
...
/* local assignments */
float d1; /* sample spacing for non-seismic data */
float f1; /* first sample location for non-seismic data */
float d2; /* sample spacing between traces */
float f2; /* first trace location */

It is a good idea to be aware of this collection when using data derived either from modeling
programs or from field datasets.

3.5.4

SURANGE - Get the Range of Header Values

A useful piece of information about trace headers is to see the range of values of the headers in
a given dataset. Typing,
% surange < data.su

will return the ranges of all SU header fields that are nonzero. For example:
% suplane | surange
32 traces:
tracl=(1,32) tracr=(1,32) offset=400 ns=64 dt=4000

The program suplane generates a test pattern whose header values simulate a common-offset
dataset. The default parameters for suplane are to make 32 traces, with 64 samples per trace
at 4 ms (4000 microseconds by SEG convention) sampling, with offset=400. The output consists
of three intersecting lines of spikes.
Please note that corrupt data may show really strange values for a large number of the
header fields. Detecting such a problem is one of the primary uses of surange.

3.5.5

SUGETHW - Get the Values of Header Words in SU Data

Having header fields on data means that there are many additional pieces of information to be
kept track of, besides just the seismic data, themselves. If you read data from a SEGY format
tape, segyread will preserve the trace header information in the main part of the SEGY header.

3.5. SETTING, EDITING, AND VIEWING TRACE HEADER FIELDS

35

We saw above that surange would permit us to see the min and max header values over an
entire dataset. However, we often need to see the values of trace header fields, trace by trace,
and in an order that we choose.
The program sugethw (pronounced, SU get header word) is just such a utility. For example,
the command sequence:
% sugethw < data.su key=keyword1,keyword2,... | more

Will dump the values of each of the header fields specified by the keywords listed.
A more tangible example, using suplane data input via a pipe | is
% suplane | sugethw key=tracl,tracr,offset,dt,ns | more
tracl=1
tracr=1
offset=400
dt=4000

ns=64

tracl=2

tracr=2

offset=400

dt=4000

ns=64

tracl=3

tracr=3

offset=400

dt=4000

ns=64

tracl=4

tracr=4

offset=400

dt=4000

ns=64

tracl=5

tracr=5

offset=400

dt=4000

ns=64

tracl=6

tracr=6

offset=400

dt=4000

ns=64

tracl=7
...

tracr=7

offset=400

dt=4000

ns=64

There is no requirement regarding the order of the key words specified, or the number of
keywords, as long as at least one is specified.
If, for some reason, you need to dump the values in binary format, an example, again using
suplane data
% suplane | sugethw key=tracl,tracr,offset,dt,ns output=binary >

file.bin

outputs the values sequentially in order of keyword given, trace by trace.

For geometry setting, you may want to use a command sequence (again illustrated by
piping suplane data into sugethw)
% suplane | sugethw key=tracl,tracr,offset,dt,ns output=geom >

The contents of hdrfile may be viewed via

% more hdrfile
1 1
2 2
3 3
4 4
5 5
...

400
400
400
400
400

4000
4000
4000
4000
4000

64
64
64
64
64

where only the first 5 rows of data have been shown.

hdrfile

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CHAPTER 3. CORE SEISMIC UNIX PROGRAMS

3.5.6

SUSHW - Set the Header Words in SU Data

The program sushw (pronounced, SU set header word) is an all purpose utility for setting the
value of seismic trace headers. This program permits the user to set one or more trace header
words. A common use of sushw is to just set a particular field to one value. For example,
sometimes data dont have the dt field set. Lets say that the data are sampled at 2 ms, By
using sukeyword, we see that dt is in microseconds
% sukeyword dt
...skipping
unsigned short ns;
unsigned short dt;

/* number of samples in this trace */

/* sample interval; in micro-seconds */

...

This means that the following command sequence will set all dt values to 2000 microseconds
% sushw < data.su key=dt a=2000 > data.out.su

A more tangible example can be seen by piping suplane data into sushw
% suplane | sushw key=dt a=2000 | sugethw key=dt | more
161 wenzel> suplane | sushw key=dt a=2000 | sugethw key=dt | more
dt=2000
dt=2000
dt=2000
dt=2000
dt=2000
...

From the selfdoc for sushw we see that the following optional parameters are defined
Optional parameters ():
key=cdp,... header key word(s) to set
a=0,... value(s) on first trace
b=0,... increment(s) within group
c=0,... group increment(s)
d=0,... trace number shift(s)
j=ULONG_MAX,ULONG_MAX,... number of elements in group

These extra options permit more complicated operations to be performed. This is necessary,
because often there is a relationship between header fields and the position of the trace within
the dataset. The value of the header field is computed by the following formula
i = itr + d
val(key) = a + b * (i % j) + c * (i / j)
where itr is the trace number (first trace has itr=0, NOT 1)

3.5. SETTING, EDITING, AND VIEWING TRACE HEADER FIELDS

37

where percent % indicates the modulo function and / is division.

For example if we want to set the sx field of the first 5 traces to 6400, the second 5 traces
to 6300, decrementing by -100 for each 5 trace groups
% sushw < data.su key=sx a=6400 c=-100 j=5

> data.new.su

Again, piping in suplane data into sushw

% suplane | sushw

key=sx a=6400 c=-100 j=5 | sugethw key=sx | more

sx=6400
sx=6400
sx=6400
sx=6400
sx=6400
sx=6300
sx=6300
sx=6300
sx=6300
sx=6300
sx=6200
sx=6200
...

As another example, if we wanted set the offset fields of each group of 5 traces to
200,400,...,6400
%

sushw

< data.su key=offset a=200 b=200 j=5 > data.out.su

As before, piping suplane data into sushw yields the following

% suplane | sushw
offset=200
offset=400
offset=600
offset=800
offset=1000
offset=200

key=offset a=200 b=200 j=5 | sugethw key=offset | more

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CHAPTER 3. CORE SEISMIC UNIX PROGRAMS

offset=400
offset=600
offset=800
offset=1000
offset=200
...

We can perform all 3 operations with one call to sushw, via:

% sushw < data.su key=dt,sx,offset a=2000,6400,200 b=0,0,200 c=0,-100,0 j=0,5,5 > newdata.su

Or with suplane data piped in

% suplane | sushw key=dt,sx,offset a=2000,6400,200 b=0,0,200 c=0,-100,0 j=0,5,5 |
sugethw key=dt,sx,offset | more
dt=2000

sx=6400

offset=200

dt=2000

sx=6400

offset=400

dt=2000

sx=6400

offset=600

dt=2000

sx=6400

offset=800

dt=2000

sx=6400

offset=1000

dt=2000

sx=6300

offset=200

dt=2000

sx=6300

offset=400

dt=2000

sx=6300

offset=600

dt=2000

sx=6300

offset=800

dt=2000

sx=6300

offset=1000

dt=2000

sx=6200

offset=200

dt=2000

sx=6200

offset=400

...

As you can see, it is natural to use pipes and redirects to control job flow, but this becomes
ungainly on a single command line. Later in this document, we will see how to construct
complicated processing sequences in the controlled environment of shell scripts.

3.5.7

Setting Geometry - Converting Observers Logs to Trace Headers

There is an often unpleasant task called setting geometry which must be performed on field
data. Often, a SEGY tape will have only a rudimentary set of header fields set in the data.

3.5. SETTING, EDITING, AND VIEWING TRACE HEADER FIELDS

39

The rest of the information (shot location, geophone location, etc...) will be supplied in the
form of observers logs.
For setting geometry, you may wish to dump a specific collection of header fields of interest
into a file, read the file into a text editor or spreadsheet program so that you can make changes.
For example, if you have some file sudata which has some header fields set incorrectly or
incompletely then the following command sequence illustrates a possible way of working with
such data. You begin by reading the selected header fields into a file hdrfile.
% sugethw < sudata output=geom key=key1,key2,... > hdrfile

Now edit the ASCII file hdrfile with any editor, setting the fields appropriately. Convert hdrfile
to a binary format via:
% a2b < hdrfile n1=nfields > binary_file

were nfields is the number of header fields in the key=.. list above. Then load the new file
of header fields via:
% sushw < sudata infile=binary_file key=key1,key2,... > sudata.edited

Again, key=key1,key2,... here is the same list as in the sugethw statement above. The
finished product is the file sudata.edited.
If you are just beginning to set the header fields, you may build the ASCII header file
hdrfile any way you want. This could be with your favorite text editor, or with a spreadsheet
program. It is not important how the ascii file is created, as long as it is in multi-column ASCII
format for the sequence above.
Of course, if you have the header values in a file consisting of C-style floats, (which you can
make either from a C-program, or from Fortran data with ftnstrip) listed trace-by-trace, then
you already have the binary file and need only execute the final sequence.

3.5.8

SUCHW - Change (or Compute) Header Words in SU Data

Some header fields such as cdp may be computed from existing header fields. The program
suchw provides this functionality.
From the selfdoc of suchw,
...
key1=cdp,... output key(s)
key2=cdp,... input key(s)
key3=cdp,... input key(s)
...
a=0,...
b=1,...
c=0,...
d=1,...

overall shift(s)
scale(s) on first input key(s)
scale on second input key(s)
overall scale(s)

we can see that this program uses the values of 2 header fields, key2 and key3, to compute a
third, key3, via the equation
...
val(key1) = (a + b * val(key2) + c * val(key3)) / d
..

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CHAPTER 3. CORE SEISMIC UNIX PROGRAMS

For example, to shift the values of the cdp header field by a constant amount, say 1

% suchw <data >outdata a=-1

or to add a constant amount, say 1000, to a header field, say tracr,

% suchw key1=tracr key2=tracr a=1000 <infile >outfile

Another possible example is that of setting the gx field by summing the offset and sx
(shot point) values using sushw and then computing the cdp field by averaging the sx
and gx. Here, we are using the actual cpp locations as the cdp numbers, instead of the
conventional 1, 2, 3, ... enumeration
% suchw <indata key1=gx key2=offset key3=sx b=1 c=1 |
% suchw key1=cdp key2=gx key3=sx b=1 c=1 d=2 >outdata

It is possible to perform both operations in one call via:

%

suchw<indata key1=gx,cdp key2=offset,gx key3=sx,sx b=1,1 c=1,1 d=1,2 >outdata

3.5.9

SUEDIT and SUXEDIT - Edit the Header Words in SU Data

Finally, it may be that you wish to examine, and possibly change just few headers. For this
purpose, we have suedit and suxedit. the SU editing programs are executed via:
% suedit diskfile (open for possible header modification if writable)
% suedit <diskfile (open read only)

and permit the interactive viewing and editing of the header fields.
For example, making test data with suplane
% suplane > data.su
% suedit data.su

yields the following

32 traces in input file
tracl=32 tracr=32 offset=400 ns=64 dt=4000
>
<------- prompt for interactive use

The commands that may be used interactively in suedit and suxedit may be seen by
typing a question mark (?) at the prompt. For example
32 traces in input file
tracl=32 tracr=32 offset=400 ns=64 dt=4000
> ?
n
<CR>
+
dN
%
r
p [n1 [n2]]
! key=val
?
q
>

read in trace #n
step
next trace;
step -> +1
prev trace;
step -> -1
adv N traces; step -> N
percentiles
ranks
tabplot
modify field
print this file
quit

3.5. SETTING, EDITING, AND VIEWING TRACE HEADER FIELDS

41

This program allows the user to view traces as a tabplot of the data sample values or view or
change individual header values
The program suxedit is similar to suedit, with the addition of X-windows graphics for
plotting traces
% suxedit diskfile (open for possible header modification if writable)
% suxedit <diskfile (open read only)
% suxedit data.su
32 traces in input file
tracl=32 tracr=32 offset=400 delrt=5 ns=64 dt=4000
> ?
n
read in trace #n
<CR>
step
+
next trace;
step -> +1
prev trace;
step -> -1
dN
adv N traces; step -> N
%
percentiles
r
ranks
p [n1 [n2]]
tabplot
g [tr1 tr2] ["opts"]
wiggle plot
f
wig plot Fourier Transf
! key=val
modify field
?
print this file
q
quit

Again, the options of this program are largely self-explanatory. Please note that the selfdoc is
more informative than the help menu given by typing the question mark ?.

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CHAPTER 3. CORE SEISMIC UNIX PROGRAMS

Chapter 4

Viewing SU Data in X-Windows and

PostScript
The Seismic Unix package has a small collection of graphics utilities for plotting data, both in
general C-style float format, and in SU format, both in the X-windows environment, for screen
viewing and in the PostScript form for hard copy.
The types of plotting that are available in SU are
contour plots,
gray or colorscale image plots,
wiggle trace plots,
line or symbol graphs,
movies,
3D cube plots (PostScript only).
These programs have lengthy selfdocs, reflecting the large number of options for selecting the
appearance and labeling of the plots. However, functionality such as windowing data, should be
done via the programs subset or suwind as a preprocessing step before the data are actually
sent to the plotting program. These plotting programs are purposely not designed to window
data, as raw seismic datasets are often huge.
Also, following the small is beautiful philosophy of Unix, we have seprate, but more or
less equivalent codes for generating PostScript output for hardcopy plotting.

4.1

X-Windows Plotting Programs

X-windows provides a unified environment for the creation of screen graphics routines, which
can be quite portable, provided that the code is written using only the items that can be
guaranteed to come with the general distributions of X.
Therefore, all of our X-windows codes are written using straight X calls, or with the XToolkit. While coding in such widget sets as Motif is easier in many respects, the code that
results is not nearly as portable. There are often great differences between the implementation
of commercial widget sets on various platforms.
43

44

CHAPTER 4. VIEWING SU DATA IN X-WINDOWS AND POSTSCRIPT

4.1.1

Plotting General Floating Point Data

The programs that are used for viewing general floating point data (data without SU headers)
in the X-window environment are
XCONTOUR - X CONTOUR Plot of f(x1,x2) via vector plot call,
XIMAGE - X IMAGE plot of a uniformly-sampled function f(x1,x2),
XWIGB - X WIGgle-trace plot of f(x1,x2) via Bitmap,
XGRAPH - X GRAPHer Graphs n[i] pairs of (x,y) coordinates,
XMOVIE - image one or more frames of a uniformly sampled function f(x1,x2).
Try the following. Make some binary data by stripping the headers off of some SU data.
For example
% suplane | sustrip > data.bin
n1=64 n2=32 d1=0.004000
nt=64 ntr=32 dt=0.004000
ns=64
The items which follow indicate that the dimensions of the data set are n1=64 by n2=32. Now view
these data in each of the plotting programs listed above (except xgraph) via:
%
%
%
%

xcontour < data.bin n1=64 n2=32 title="contour" &

ximage < data.bin n1=64 n2=32 title="image" &
xwigb < data.bin n1=64 n2=32 title="wiggle trace"
xmovie < data.bin n1=64 n2=32 title="movie" &

&

Please note that the ampersand & is a Unix command telling the working shell to run the program
in background.
To test xgraph, make an ASCII file containing a double column listing of pairs of data to be plotted
such as the following
1 1
2 1.5
3 3
4 8
10 7
Call this file data.ascii Then use a2b to convert the file to binary and then plot it with xgraph
% a2b < data.ascii n1=2 > data.bin
n=5
% xgraph < data.bin n=5
Note that the n=5 that is echoed by a2b is the same as the input to xgraph.
When you are finished, and wish to get rid of the windows, you may click on the window and type
the letter q, for quit. On some systems, you may have to actually select the destroy option by
clicking and dragging on the square in the upper left hand side of the window frame.
Please note that all of these programs have a huge number of options, reflecting a fairly large
collection of functionalities. See the selfdoc of each of these programs by typing
% programname
or
% sudoc programname

4.1. X-WINDOWS PLOTTING PROGRAMS

4.1.2

45

X-Windows Plotting of SU Data

To plot data that are in the SU format, a number of programs (many of which have parallel functionality
to those already discussed) have been created. These are
SUXCONTOUR - X CONTOUR plot of Seismic UNIX tracefile via vector plot call,
SUXIMAGE - X-windows IMAGE plot of an SU data set,
SUXWIGB - X-windows Bit-mapped WIGgle plot of an SU data set,
SUXGRAPH - X-windows GRAPH plot of an SU data set,
SUXMOVIE - X MOVIE plot of an SU data set,
SUXMAX - X-windows graph of the MAX, min, or absolute max value on each trace of an SU
data set.
Rather than maintain multiple codes, each of these programs actually calls one or more of the X-windows
graphics programs listed in the previous subsection. Please note, that the selfdoc of the non-SU version
of a given graphics program also applies to the SU version, meaning that, these programs also have a
large functionality.
You may test each of these programs using suplane data via:
%
%
%
%
%
%

suplane
suplane
suplane
suplane
suplane
suplane

|
|
|
|
|
|

suxcontour title="contour" &

suximage title="image" &
suxwigb title="wiggle trace"
suxgraph title="graph" &
suxmovie title="movie" &
suxmax
title="max" &

&

Again, note that the ampersand & is a Unix command telling the working shell to run the program in
background. When you are finished, and wish to get rid of the windows, you may click on the window
and type the letter q, for quit. On some systems, you may have to actually select the destroy option
by clicking and dragging on the square in the upper left hand side of the window frame.

4.1.3

Special Features of X-Windows Programs

To find out all of the many options of these programs, please see their selfdocs, by typing the names of
each of these programs on the commandline:
%
%
%
%
%

suxcontour
suxwigb
suximage
suxmovie
suxmax

In addition, the names of the non-SU versions of some of these programs may be typed to yield
additional information
%
%
%
%

xcontour
xwigb
ximage
xmovie

However there are some properties that these programs have that can only be illustrated with
examples.

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CHAPTER 4. VIEWING SU DATA IN X-WINDOWS AND POSTSCRIPT

Plotting wiggle traces in true offset with SUXWIGB

It is possible to plot wiggle traces in true offset, that is to say, to take the values for the horizontal
dimension of the wiggle plot from the values in the header. This is done with the key= parameter.
For example, lets make some test data with suplane and plot it using the key=offset via:
% suplane | suchw key1=offset key2=tracl a=0 b=100

| suxwigb key=offset

&

The result is a plot with the x2 axis labeled in the values of the offset header field (which count by
100s).

Making a movie with SUXMOVIE

It is possible to make movies of seismic data with suxmovie. An example of this is to make several
synthetic data panels with suplane appending each successive panel with the double redirect sign
%
%
%
%
%
%
%
%

suplane
suplane
suplane
suplane
suplane
suplane
suplane
suplane

>
|
|
|
|
|
|
|

junk1.su
suaddnoise
suaddnoise
suaddnoise
suaddnoise
suaddnoise
suaddnoise
suaddnoise

sn=20 >> junk1.su

sn=15 >> junk1.su
sn=10 >> junk1.su
sn=5 >> junk1.su
sn=3 >> junk1.su
sn=2 >> junk1.su
sn=1 >> junk1.su

% suxmovie < junk1.su n2=32 title="frame=%g" loop=1

&

The final command has n2=32 set to show that there are 32 traces per frame of data. The usage
of %q permits the frame number to be listed as part of the title, and loop=1 runs the movie in a
continuous loop.
To make the movie go faster or slower, simply enlarge or shrink the window by clicking and dragging
on the lower right corner of the plot. Clicking the far-right mouse button once will freeze the frame, and
clicking it a second time will start the movie again.

4.1.4

PostScript Plotting Programs

To complement our collection of X-Windows plotting utilities are a collection of very similar PostScript
codes. The idea was to create PostScript plotting codes which would correspond to each of the XWindows codes listed above.

4.1.5

PostScript Plotting of General Floating Point Data

The programs that are used for PostScript plotting of general floating point data (data without SU
headers) are
PSCONTOUR - PostScript CONTOURing of a two-dimensional function f(x1,x2),
PSIMAGE - PostScript IMAGE plot of a uniformly-sampled function f(x1,x2),
PSCUBE - PostScript image plot of a data CUBE,
PSGRAPH - PostScript GRAPHer Graphs n[i] pairs of (x,y) coordinates,
PSMOVIE - PostScript MOVIE plot of a uniformly-sampled function f(x1,x2,x3),
PSWIGB - PostScript WIGgle-trace plot of f(x1,x2) via Bitmap,
PSWIGP - PSWIGP - PostScript WIGgle-trace plot of f(x1,x2) via Polygons.

4.1. X-WINDOWS PLOTTING PROGRAMS

47

Again, you may create binary data to test these programs by stripping off the headers of some
suplane data.
% suplane | sustrip > data.bin
n1=64 n2=32 d1=0.004000
nt=64 ntr=32 dt=0.004000
ns=64
The dimensions of the data are n1=64 samples per trace by n2=32 traces.
%
%
%
%
%
%

pscontour < data.bin n1=64 n2=32 title="contour" > data1.eps

psimage < data.bin n1=64 n2=32 title="image" > data2.eps
pscube < data.bin n1=64 n2=32 title="cube plot" > data4.eps
pswigb < data.bin n1=64 n2=32 title="bitmap wiggle trace" > data3.eps
pswigp < data.bin n1=64 n2=32 title="wiggle trace" > data4.eps
psmovie < data.bin n1=64 n2=32 title="movie" > data5.eps

The output files contain Adobe Level 2 Encapsulated PostScript. You should be able to view these files
with any standard X-windows PostScript previewer (such as ghostview).
Please note, that the output from psmovie may not work on your system. This output works under
NeXTStep, but is multi-page Encapsulated PostScript, which is not generally supported by PostScript
devices.
To test psgraph, make an ascii file containing a double column listing of pairs of data to be plotted
such as the following
1 1
2 1.5
3 3
4 8
10 7
Call this file data.ascii Then use a2b to convert the file to binary and then plot it with psgraph
% a2b < data.ascii n1=2 > data.bin
n=5
% psgraph < data.bin n=5 > data6.eps
Note that the n=5 that is echoed by a2b is the same as the input to psgraph. This permits the
following trick to be used
% a2b < data.ascii outpar=junk.par n1=2 > data.bin
% psgraph < data.bin par=junk.par > data6.eps
to yield the same output.

4.1.6

PostScript Plotting of SU Data

Just as there are X-Windows codes for plotting SU data, there are also codes for making PostScript
plots of these data. The programs for PostScript graphics are
SUPSCONTOUR - PostScript CONTOUR plot of an SU data set
SUPSIMAGE - PostScript IMAGE plot of an SU data set
SUPSCUBE - PostScript CUBE plot of an SU data set
SUPSGRAPH - PostScript GRAPH plot of an SU data set

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CHAPTER 4. VIEWING SU DATA IN X-WINDOWS AND POSTSCRIPT

SUPSWIGB - PostScript Bit-mapped WIGgle plot of an SU data set
SUPSWIGP - PostScript Polygon-filled WIGgle plot of an SU data set
SUPSMAX - PostScript of the MAX, min, or absolute max value on each trace of a SU data set
We can use suplane data to test each of these programs as we did with the X-Windows codes

% suplane > junk.su

%
%
%
%
%
%
%

supscontour < junk.su title="contour" > data1.eps

supsimage < junk.su title="image" label1="sec" label2="trace number"
supscube < junk.su title="cube plot" > data4.eps
supswigb < junk.su title="bitmap wiggle trace" > data3.eps
supswigp < junk.su title="wiggle trace" > data4.eps
supsmovie < junk.su title="movie" > data5.eps
supsmax < junk.su title="max" > data5.eps

> data2.eps

The output files contain Adobe Level 2 Encapsulated PostScript, and is compatible with TeX, LaTeX,
and many draw tools. You will need to use a PostScript previewer, such as GhostScript or Ghostview
to view these files on the screen.
Please note again, that programs for which there is a non-SU version, have selfdoc information which
applies to these codes, as well.

4.2

Additional PostScript Support

There are several additional tools for supporting PostScript operations in SU. These are
PSBBOX - change BoundingBOX of existing PostScript file
PSMERGE - MERGE PostScript files
MERGE2 - MERGE2 PostScript figures onto one page
MERGE4 - MERGE4 figures onto one page
PSLABEL - output PostScript file consisting of a single TEXT string on a specified background.
(Use with psmerge to label plots.)
PSMANAGER - printer MANAGER for HP 4MV and HP 5Si Mx Laserjet PostScript printing
PSEPSI - add an EPSI formatted preview bitmap to an EPS file
The programs psbbox, pslabel, psmerge, merge2, and merge4 are designed to help in constructing figures made from SU-style graphics programs, and are not guaranteed to work with EPS files
generated by other means.

4.2.1

PSBBOX - Changing the BoundingBox

For example, create test PostScript data with suplane and supswigb via
% suplane | supswigb > junk1.eps
where the .eps extension is chosen as a reminder that this is encapsulated PostScript. Lets say that
there is too much white-space surrounding this figure. To fix this problem, we want to change the size
of the BoundingBox at the top of the file. For example
% more junk1.eps

4.2. ADDITIONAL POSTSCRIPT SUPPORT

49

shows the dimensions of the BoundingBox

%!PS-Adobe-2.0 EPSF-1.2
%%DocumentFonts:
%%BoundingBox: 13 31 603 746
...
We could manually edit this, but with psbbox we can type:
% psbbox < junk1.eps llx=40 lly=80 urx=590 ury=730 > junk2.eps
Original: %%BoundingBox: 13 31 603 746
Updated:
%%BoundingBox: 40 80 590 730
to yield a smaller BoundingBox, with correspondingly less white space.

4.2.2

PSMERGE, MERGE2, MERGE4 - Merging PostScript Plots

It is often useful to merge several plots to make a compound figure. The program psmerge is the general
tool in SU provided for this. There are two additions shell scripts, which call psmerge called merge2
and merge4. If we make a couple of test datasets
% suplane > junk.su
% suplane | sufilter > junk1.su
and display these by various means
%
%
%
%

supswigb < junk.su title="Wiggle trace" label1="sec" label2="trace number" > junk1.eps
supsimage < junk.su title="Image Plot" label1="sec" label2="trace number" > junk2.eps
supscontour < junk.su title="Contour Plot" label1="sec" label2="trace number" > junk3.eps
supswigb < junk1.su title="Filtered" label1="sec" label2="trace number" > junk4.eps

we now have 4 PostScript files which can be merged to make new plots.
Merging 2 plots may be done via:
% merge2 junk1.eps junk2.eps > junk.m2.eps
while merging all 4 plots may be done via
% merge2 junk1.eps junk2.eps junk3.eps junk4.eps > junk.m4.eps
Of course, neither merge2 nor merge4 are robust enough to handle all plot sizes, so you may need
to manually merge plots with psmerge. Also, if you want to overlay plots, such as a graph on top of a
wiggle trace plot, then you will also need to use psmerge.
Here is an example of creating plots and merging them with psmerge. Because the command
sequence is ungainly for typing on the commandline it is expressed as a shell script
#! /bin/sh
# shell script for demonstrating PSMERGE
# make data
suplane > junk.su
suplane | sufilter > junk1.su
# make PostScript Plots of data
supswigb < junk.su wbox=6 hbox=2.5 \
title="Wiggle trace" label1="sec" label2="traces" > junk1.eps

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CHAPTER 4. VIEWING SU DATA IN X-WINDOWS AND POSTSCRIPT

supscontour < junk.su wbox=2.5 hbox=2.5 \

title="Contour Plot" label1="sec" label2="traces" > junk3.eps
supswigp < junk1.su wbox=2.5 hbox=2.5 \
title="Filtered" label2="traces" > junk4.eps
# merge PostScript plots
psmerge in=junk1.eps translate=0.,0. \
in=junk3.eps translate=0.0,3.7 \
in=junk4.eps translate=3.3,3.7 > junk5.eps
echo "You may view the files: junk1.eps, junk3.eps, junk4.eps, junk5.eps"
echo "with your PostScript Previewer"
exit 0
In this case, the original files were made small to fit within an 8-1/2 by 11 window. However, psmerge
has the capability of scaling plots. (This is how the merge2 and merge4 shells work. You can examine
the texts of these for further information by typing
% more $CWPROOT/bin/merge2
or
% more $CWPROOT/bin/merge4
An additional example of merging 3 plots of different sizes is given by the following shell script
#! /bin/sh
# shell script for demonstrating PSMERGE
# make data
suplane > junk.su
suplane | sufilter > junk1.su
# make PostScript Plots of data
supswigb < junk.su wbox=7 hbox=4 \
title="Wiggle trace" label1="sec" label2="traces" > junk1.eps
supscontour < junk.su \
title="Contour Plot" label1="sec" label2="traces" > junk3.eps
supswigp < junk1.su label1="sec" \
title="Filtered" label2="traces" > junk4.eps
# merge PostScript plots
psmerge in=junk1.eps translate=0.,0. scale=.6,.6 \
in=junk3.eps scale=.4,.4 translate=0.0,3.7 \
in=junk4.eps scale=.4,.4 translate=3.3,3.7 > junk5.eps
echo "You may view the files: junk1.eps, junk3.eps, junk4.eps, junk5.eps"
echo "with your PostScript Previewer"
exit 0
In this case, the plots are of normal size, and are then scaled to fit within an 8-1/2 by 11 window.

4.3. TRACE PICKING UTILITIES

4.3

51

Trace Picking Utilities

For lack of a better location to discuss this is the subject, we will now listtrace picking utilities. The
X-Windows wiggle trace, image, and contour plotting programs all have the attribute that by placing
the cursor on the point to be picked and typing the letter s the coordinates of the point are saved in
memory. When the letter q is typed, the values are saved in a user-specified file mpicks.
There are two additional programs which are dedicated to picking issues. These are
XPICKER - X wiggle-trace plot of f(x1,x2) via Bitmap with PICKing
SUXPICKER - X-windows WIGgle plot PICKER of an SU data set
SUPICKAMP - pick amplitudes within user defined and resampled window
with xpicker being the non-SU data version which suxpicker calls. The xpicker/suxpicker programs
are interactive tools for picking. The program supickamp is a simple automated picking program,
which seeks the largest amplituded within a user-specified window.
See demos in $CWPROOT/src/demos/Picking for more information about supickamp.

4.4

Editing SU Data

Once the data are read in, and the headers are set properly, then there will often be manipulation and
data editing issues to be dealt with.
It is often necessary to perform tasks of varying so that data may be
windowed,
sorted,
truncated,
tapered,
zeroed,
made uniform in number of samples,
concatenated,
which are dataset editing issues.
This section, therefore will deal with the following programs
SUWIND - window traces by key word
SUSORT - sort on any segy header keywords
SURAMP - Linearly taper the start and/or end of traces to zero.
SUTAPER - Taper the edge traces of a data panel to zero.
SUNULL - create null (all zeroes) traces
SUZERO zero-out data within a time window
SUKILL - zero out traces
SUMUTE - mute above (or below) a user-defined polygonal curve with the distance along the
curve specified by key header word
SUVLENGTH - Adjust variable length traces to common length
SUVCAT - append one data set to another (trace by trace)
which provide a variety of trace editing utilities.

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CHAPTER 4. VIEWING SU DATA IN X-WINDOWS AND POSTSCRIPT

4.4.1

SUWIND - window traces by key word

It is very common to view or process only a subset of a seismic dataset. Because seismic data have a
number of parameters that we may want to window the data about, suwind has been written.

Windowing by trace header field

In its simplist usage, suwind permits the user to set min and max values of a specific header field
key=tracl
min=LONG_MIN
max=LONG_MAX

Key header word to window on (see segy.h)

min value of key header word to pass
max value of key header word to pass

For example, windowing suplane data by trace number yields

% suplane

| suwind key=tracl

min=5 max=10 | sugethw key=tracl | more

tracl=5
tracl=6
tracl=7
tracl=8
tracl=9
tracl=10
On a large dataset, the count parameter should be used, instead of setting the max value. If you set
an explicit max value, suwind will have to go through the entire dataset to capture all possible traces
with values between the min and max value, because the program assumes that multiple occurrences of
trace labeling are possible. For example, compare
% suplane ntr=100000 | suwind key=tracl min=5 max=10 | sugethw tracl | more
(its ok to type control-c after a few minutes) with
%suplane ntr=100000 | suwind key=tracl min=5 count=5 | sugethw tracl | more
where suplane has been set to create 100000 traces in each case.
More sophisticated windowing, (decimating data, for example)
j=1
s=0

Pass every j-th trace ...

... based at s (if ((key - s)%j) == 0)

can be illustrated with suplane data by showing every 2nd trace

% suplane
tracl=2
tracl=4
tracl=6

| suwind key=tracl j=2 | sugethw key=tracl | more

4.4. EDITING SU DATA

53

tracl=8
tracl=10
...
or by every 2nd trace, based at 1
% suplane

| suwind key=tracl j=2 s=1 | sugethw key=tracl | more

tracl=1
tracl=3
tracl=5
tracl=7
tracl=9
...
Accepting and rejecting traces is also possible with suwind.
...
...

reject=none
accept=none

Skip traces with specified key values

Pass traces with specified key values(see notes)

The reject parameter is a straightforward rejecting of numbered traces. For example

suplane | suwind key=tracl reject=3,8,9 | sugethw key=tracl | more
tracl=1
tracl=2
tracl=4
tracl=5
tracl=6
tracl=7
tracl=10
tracl=11
tracl=12
traces 3, 8, and 9 are rejected.
The accept option is a bit strangeit does not mean accept only the traces on the accept list! It
means accept these traces, even if they would otherwise be rejected. For example:
suplane | suwind key=tracl reject=3,8,9 accept=8 | sugethw key=tracl
| more

54

CHAPTER 4. VIEWING SU DATA IN X-WINDOWS AND POSTSCRIPT

tracl=1
tracl=2
tracl=4
tracl=5
tracl=6
tracl=7
tracl=8
tracl=10
tracl=11
....
If you want to accept only the traces listed, then you need to set max=0
% suplane | suwind key=tracl accept=8 max=0 | sugethw key=tracl | more
tracl=8
Only trace 8 is passed in this example.
The count parameter overrides the accept parameter, so you cant specify count if you want true
unconditional acceptance.
See the demos in $CWPROOT/src/demos/Selecting Traces for specific examples.

Time gating
The second issue windowing is time gating. In fact, when people want to window data, they often want
to do both trace and time gating.
Options for vertical windowing (time gating):
tmin = 0.0
min time to pass
tmax = (from header)
max time to pass
itmin = 0
min time sample to pass
itmax = (from header)
max time sample to pass
nt = itmax-itmin+1
number of time samples to pass
The result of setting either itmin and itmax or tmin and tmax will be to create a time gate which
is to the nearest sample. If you want to time gate to an arbitrary (inter-sample) window, then this is a
problem in data resampling and suresamp is the program of choice.

4.4.2

SUSORT - sort on any SEGY header keywords

One of the advantages of working in the Unix operating system is that when a superior Unix system call
for a particular operation exists, it is advantageous to use that call to perform the necessary task. Such
a task is sorting, and the Unix sort command is just such a utility.
Susort takes advantage of the Unix system sort command to permit the sorting of traces by header
field key work.
For example, sorting data (with values in ascending order) for two fields (cdp and offset) would be
done via:

4.4. EDITING SU DATA

55

% susort <indata.su >outdata.su cdp offset

In decending order for, offset, and ascending order for cdp
% susort <indata.su >outdata.su cdp -offset
Note: Only the following types of input/output are supported Disk input to any output, but pipe input
to disk output.
Please see the demo in $CWPROOT/src/demos/Sorting Traces for specific examples of trace sorting.

4.4.3

SURAMP and SUTAPER - tapering data values

Many seismic processing algorithms will show spurious artifacts resulting from sharp edges on a dataset.
Tapering the amplitudes on the edges of a dataset is the one of the easiest ways of suppressing these
artifacts. For this purpose, we have sutaper to taper the edges of the dataset (for example here, linear
taper over 5 traces on each end of the dataset)
% sutaper <diskfile >stdout ntaper=5
and suramp to smooth the beginning and/or end of traces (for the example here, ramp up from 0 to
tmin=.05 seconds, and ramp down from tmax=1.15 seconds to the end of the traces
% suramp <diskfile tmin=.05 tmax=1.15 >stdout

4.4.4

SUKILL, SUZERO, SUNULL, SUMUTE - zeroing out data

It is often useful to zero out noisy traces, or traces on the edge of a dataset (abrupt analog to tapering),
or to create null traces as separators to be used between successive panels of data in plotting.

SUKILL - zero out traces

To zero out a block of traces type,
% sukill <stdin >stdout min=MIN_TRACE count=COUNT
where COUNT is the number of traces to be zeroed, and MIN TRACE is the minimum trace number
in the block of traces.

SUNULL - Create a Panel of Empty traces

It is sometimes necessary to create a panel of zero value traces. To create a panel of traces of NTR
traces with NT time samples
% sunull nt=NT ntr=NTR <stdin >stdout min=MIN_TRACE count=COUNT

SUZERO zero-out data within a time window

To zero out data within a time window, use suzero
% suzero itmin=MIN_TIME_SAMPLE itmax=MAX_TIME_SAMPLE <indata.su > outdata.su

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CHAPTER 4. VIEWING SU DATA IN X-WINDOWS AND POSTSCRIPT

SUMUTE - Surgically Muting Data

The last collection of programs perform a form of crude muting of the data. For a more precise muting
operation, there is sumute which can perform surgical muting of SU data. The program may be used
by specifying trace header field to mute on via the key= parameter,
% sumute <indata.su >outdata.su key=KEYWORD xmute=x1,x2,x3,... tmute=t1,t2,t3,...
An suplane data example of this is to compare original suplane data, made by
% suplane | suxwigb &
with surgically muted data
% suplane | sumute key=tracl xmute=1,10,12 tmute=.06,.1,.11 | suxwigb &
This says to mute every arrival above the polygonal curve defined by the curve defined by the xmute=
and tmute= values.
The program also permits the x,t values to be input from binary files by setting the options nmute,
xfile, and tfile as listed in a portion of the selfdoc for this program
...
nmute= number of x,t values defining mute
xfile= file containing position values as specified by
the key parameter
tfile= file containing corresponding time values (sec)
...
=tracl use trace number instead
ntaper=0 number of points to taper before hard
mute (sine squared taper)
below=0 =1 to zero BELOW the polygonal curve
...
Please note also that above and below refer to the appearance on a seismic plot, such as the suxwigb
plot and not to the time values.

4.4.5

SUVCAT and CAT - Concatenating Data

There are two possible ways of appending one dataset onto another (concatenating). The first way would
be to append one dataset to another, so that the traces from the second file simply follow the traces of
the first file. This is done with the Unix cat command via:
% cat data1.su data2.su > data3.su
In addition, it may be necessary to renumber the traces via:
% cat data1.su data2.su | sushw key=tracl a=1 > data3.su
so that the tracl parameter is monotonically increasing.
The second way of appending one dataset to another is to vertically append each trace of the
second dataset to the end of the first dataset. This is done via suvcat.
% suvcat data1.su data2.su > data3.su
In this case, no modification of the header fields should be necessary.

4.4. EDITING SU DATA

4.4.6

57

SUVLENGTH - Adjust Variable Length Traces to a Common Number

of Samples

Sometimes the data consists of traces which have different numbers of samples on each trace. The
program suvlength We can construct an example of this with suplane data
% suplane nt=64 > data1.su
% suplane nt=32 > data2.su
% cat data1.su data2.su > data3.su
Attempts to use any SU program on the resulting file data3.su will probably result in failure, because
most SU programs require that the number of samples be constant on a panel of data. Applying
suvlength fixes this problem
% suvlength ns=64 < data3.su > data4.su
% suxwigb < data4.su title="Test of suvlength"
by making all of the traces the same length.

&

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CHAPTER 4. VIEWING SU DATA IN X-WINDOWS AND POSTSCRIPT

Chapter 5

General Operations on SU Data

Beyond the task of editing SU data are operations level codes which perform
gaining,
resampling,
unary operations (arithmetic operations involving a single data file),
binary operations (arithmetic operations involving two data files),
The purpose of this section, therefore will be to discuss the programs
SUADDNOISE - add noise to traces,
SUGAIN - apply various types of gain to display traces,
SUOP - do unary arithmetic operation on segys,
SUOP2 - do a binary operation on two data sets,
that perform these operations

5.0.7

SUADDNOISE - Add noise to SU data

While it may seem that having a program that adds noise to seismic data is counterproductive, it is
often useful for testing purposes to have the capability of simulating noise.
It is also useful for demonstration purposes, and many of the demos below use suaddnoise to fill
in the blanks in the suplane testpattern. A couple of examples of the output of this program, using
suplane data
% suplane | suxwigb title="no noise" &
% suplane | suaddnoise | suxwigb title="noise added" &
% suplane | suaddnoise sn=2 | suxwigb title="noise added" &

5.0.8

SUGAIN - Gaining to SU data

There are numerous operations which come under the heading of gaining, which sugain performs.
These operations include
scaling the data,
multiplying the data by a power of time,
taking the power of the data,

59

60

CHAPTER 5. GENERAL OPERATIONS ON SU DATA

automatic gain control,
trapping noise spiked traces,
clipping specified amplitudes or quantiles,
balancing traces by quantile clip, rms value, or mean,
scaling the data,
biasing or debiasing the data.

The heirarchy of the operations is stated by the following equation

out(t) = scale * BAL{CLIP[AGC{[t^tpow * exp(epow * t) * ( in(t)-bias )]^gpow}]}
You may see what sugain does by running the following examples using suplane data. Noise has
been added with suaddnoise to make the affects of AGC apparent. Type only the items following the
percent %. Create some SU data (with noise added, via)
% suplane | suaddnoise > data.su
%
%
%
%
%
%
%
%
%

suxwigb < data.su title="Ungained Data" &

sugain < data.su scale=5.0 | suxwigb title="Scaled data" &
sugain < data.su agc=1 wagc=.01 | suxwigb title="AGC=1 WAGC=.01 sec &
sugain < data.su agc=1 wagc=.2 | suxwigb title="AGC=1 WAGC=.1 sec &
sugain < data.su pbal=1 | suxwigb title="traces balanced by rms" &
sugain < data.su qbal=1 | suxwigb title="traces balanced by quantile" &
sugain < data.su mbal=1 | suxwigb title="traces balanced by mean" &
sugain < data.su tpow=2 | suxwigb title="t squared factor applied" &
sugain < data.su tpow=.5 | suxwigb title="square root t factor applied" &

Please note, on your terminal window, there will be a message with clip= some number, for example:
xwigb: clip=1
This indicates the amplitude value above which traces are clipped. You may think of this as the value
of the maximum on the trace.

5.0.9

SUOP - Unary Arithmetic Operations on SU Data

Occassionally we want to apply mathematical functions or other operations which go beyond gaining to
data. Such operations might include
absolute value,
signed square root,
square,
signed square,
signum function,
exponential,
natural logarithm,
signed common logarithm,
cosine,

61
sine,
tangent,
hyperbolic cosine,
hyperbolic sine,
hyperbolic tangent,
divide trace by Max. Value,
express trace values in decibels: 20 * slog10 (data)
negate values,
pass only positive values,
pass only negative values.
Operations involving logarithms are punctuated meaning that if the contains 0 values, 0 values are
returned.
Examples of suop using SU plane data may be easily run
% suplane | suaddnoise > data.su
% suop < data.su op=abs | suxwigb title="absolute value" &
% suop < data.su op=ssqrt | suxwigb title="signed square root" &
% suop < data.su op=sqr | suxwigb title="signed square" &
...
Please type:
% suop
to see the selfdoc and the other options.

5.0.10

SUOP2 - Binary Operations with SU data

To perform operations two SU datasets, the progam suop2 has been provided. Some of the opperations
supported are to compute the
difference,
sum,
product,
quotient,
difference of a panel and a single trace,
sum of a panel and a single trace,
product of a panel and a single trace,
quotient of a panel and a single trace.
The first 4 options assume that there are the same number of traces in each SU datafile. In the last 4,
it is assumed that there is only a single trace in the second file.
From the selfdoc of suop2 please note that there are 8 equivalent shell scripts commands which
perform these operations

62

CHAPTER 5. GENERAL OPERATIONS ON SU DATA

...
susum file1 file2 == suop2 file1 file2 op=sum
sudiff file1 file2 == suop2 file1 file2 op=diff
suprod file1 file2 == suop2 file1 file2 op=prod
suquo file1 file2 == suop2 file1 file2 op=quo
For: panel "op" trace operations:
suptsum file1 file2 == suop2 file1
suptdiff file1 file2 == suop2 file1
suptprod file1 file2 == suop2 file1
suptquo file1 file2 == suop2 file1
...

file2
file2
file2
file2

op=ptsum
op=ptdiff
op=ptprod
op=ptquo

All of these call suop2 to perform the computation.

Try the following. Make two files of SU data with suplane
%
%
%
%
%

suplane > junk1.su

suxwigb < junk1.su | suxwigb title="Data without noise" &
suplane | suaddnoise > junk2.su
suxwigb < junk2.su | suxwigb title="Data with noise added" &
suop2 junk2.su junk1.su op=diff | suxwigb title="difference" &

Note, that the filenames must appear before the op=.

5.1

Transform and Filtering Operations

A major aspect of seismic research and seismic processing is related to operations which are based on
mathematical transform methods. In particular, much of seismic processing would not exist without
numerical Fourier transforms. Filtering is a related subject, because the majority of filters are applied
in the frequency domain, or are at least representable mathematically as frequency domain operations.
In addition to standard Fourier transforms, there are a couple of other transforms, such as the Hilbert
transform, and the Gabor transform which are also included in the SU package. These items may find
more use as educational tools, rather than processing tools.

5.1.1

Fourier Transform Operations

There are Fourier transform operations for both 1D and 2D applications in the SU package. The 1D
transforms provide spectral (either amplitude or phase) information about each trace in a panel of seismic
data.
The 2D transforms include the seismic F-K variety, assuming that the fast dimension of the input
data is temporal, and the second dimension is spatial, and the non-seismic K1-K2 variety, in which the
input is assumed to be purely spatial (x1,x2) data.

5.1.2

1D Fourier Transforms

SUFFT - fft real time traces to complex frequency traces

SUIFFT - fft complex frequency traces to real time traces
SUAMP - output amp, phase, real or imag trace from (frequency, x)
SUSPECFX - Fourier SPECtrum (T to F) of traces domain data

5.1. TRANSFORM AND FILTERING OPERATIONS

63

The program sufft produces the output of the Fourier transform operation as a complex data type.
The program suifft is designed to accept complex input as would be generated by sufft to perform the
inverse Fourier transform. The cascade of these operations is not quite an non-operation, because there
is zeropadding which is automatically implemented for the transforms. Also, the header fields will not
quite be right for seismic data. For example, try:
% suplane | suxwigb title="Original Data" &
% suplane | sufft | suifft | sushw key=d1,dt a=0,4000 | suxwigb

&

The result is the same as the input, except there are more samples on the traces due to zero-padding
required for the transform.
To view the amplitude and phase spectra, and the real and imaginary parts of the of the output of
sufft, do the following
%
%
%
%

suplane
suplane
suplane
suplane

|
|
|
|

sufft
sufft
sufft
sufft

|
|
|
|

suamp
suamp
suamp
suamp

mode=amp | suxwigb title="amplitude" &

mode=phase | suxwigb title="phases" &
mode=real | suxwigb title="real" &
mode=imag | suxwigb title="imaginary" &

SU data has a format which allows for the storage of the real and imaginary parts of data in a complex
datatype. To see the header field settings for that format, type:
% suplane | sufft | surange
sufft: d1=3.571428
32 traces:
tracl=(1,32) tracr=(1,32) trid=11 offset=400 ns=72
dt=4000 d1=3.571428
You will notice that the setting for the trace id (trid) is 11. Typing:
% sukeyword trid
...
11 = Fourier transformed - unpacked Nyquist
xr[0],xi[0],...,xr[N/2],xi[N/2]
...
shows that trid=11 how the data are arranged in the output of the fft.
Of course, most of the time, we only want to have a quick look at the amplitude spectrum of a
seismic trace, or a panel of seismic traces. For these purposes use suspecfx
% suplane | suspecfx | suximage title="F-X Amplitude Spectrum"

&

which directly displays the amplitude spectra of each trace of the input SU data.

5.1.3

2D Fourier Transforms

Seismic data are generally at least 2D datasets. If the data really are data in (time, space) coordinates,
then the output should be in (frequency, wavenumber), the F-K domain. However, there are applications
where we consider the data to be in two spatial dimensions (x1,x2) meaning that the output is in (k1,k2)
We have the programs
SUSPECFK - F-K Fourier SPECtrum of data set
SUSPECK1K2 - 2D (K1,K2) Fourier SPECtrum of (x1,x2) data set
For each of these cases. Examples using suplane data are easily run using

64

CHAPTER 5. GENERAL OPERATIONS ON SU DATA

% suplane | suspecfk | suximage title="F-K Amplitude Spectrum" &

% suplane | suspeck1k2 | suximage title="K1-K2 Amplitude Spectrum"

&

Please note, as these are display programs, so the intent is that plots of the output should appear correct
when compared with a plot of the original data. The effect of the 2D Fourier transform on a line of
spikes is to produce a line of spikes normal to the original line, if the (k1,k2) data are plotted on the
same plot as the (x1,x2) data,

5.2

Hilbert Transform, Trace Attributes, and Time-Frequency

Domain

A number of classical techniques for representing instantaneous trace attributes have been created over
the years. Many of these techniques involve the construction of a quadrature trace to be used as the
imaginary part of a complex trace (with the real part, being the real data). The quadrature trace
is created with the Hilbert transform following the construction of the so-called allied function. This
representation permits instantaneous amplitude, phase, and frequency information to be generated
for a dataset, by taking the modulus, phase, and time derivative of the phase, respectively. An alternate
approach is to perform multi-filter analysis on data, to represent it as a function of both time and
frequency.
Tools in SU which perform these operations are
SUHILB - Hilbert transform
SUATTRIBUTES - trace ATTRIBUTES instantanteous amplitude, phase, or frequency
SUGABOR - Outputs a time-frequency representation of seismic data via the Gabor transform-like
multifilter analysis,
To generate the Hilbert transform of a test dataset, try
% suplane | suhilb | suxwigb title="Hilbert Transform"

&

This program is useful for instructional and testing purposes.

To see an example of trace attributes with suattributes it is necessary to make data which has
a strong time-frequency variability. This is done here with suvibro which makes a synthetic vibroseis
sweep. Compare the following:
%
%
%
%

suvibro
suvibro
suvibro
suvibro

|
|
|
|

suxgraph title="Vibroseis sweep" &

suattributes mode=amp | suxgraph title="Inst. amplitude" &
suattributes mode=phase unwrap=1.0 | suxgraph title="Inst. phase"
suattributes mode=freq | suxgraph title="Inst. frequency" &

&

which show, respectively, instantaneous amplitude, phase, and frequency.

To see the synthetic vibroseis trace in the time-frequency domain, try the following:
% suvibro | sugabor | suximage title="time frequency plot"

&

The result is an image which shows the instantaneous or apparent frequency increasing from 10hz to
60hz, with time, exactly as stated by the default parameters of suvibro.
See the demos in $CWPROOT/src/demos/Time Freq Analysis and $CWPROOT/src/demos/Filtering/Sugabor
for further information.

5.3. RADON TRANSFORM - TAU P FILTERING

5.3

65

Radon Transform - Tau P Filtering

The Radon or tau-p transform, as it is sometimes called in geophysical literature is useful for a variety
of multiple suppression, and other surgical data manipulation tasks. The programs
SUTAUP - forwared and inverse T-X and F-K global slant stacks
SUHARLAN - signal-noise separation by the invertible linear transformation method of Harlan,
1984
SURADON - compute forward or reverse Radon transform or remove multiples by using the
parabolic Radon transform to estimate multiples and subtract.
SUINTERP - interpolate traces using automatic event picking
are provided to make use of this transform. You may tests using suplane data as we have with other
programs to see the output from each of these codes. Both suinterp and suradon have some sophisticated options which my require some experimentation.
See also the demos in $CWPROOT/src/demos/Tau P for examples.

5.4

1D Filtering Operations

A large part of what is called seismic processing, may be thought of as being filtering. There are
filtering operations for 1D applications in the SU package that span simple filtering tasks, to more
sophisticated tasks including deconvolution and wavelet shaping operations. These operations are 1D,
in that they are applied trace by trace.
Several types of filtering operations that arise in seismic processing are
zero bandpass, bandreject, lowpass, and highpass , and notch filtering,
minimum or zero phase Butterworth filtering,
Wiener prediction error (deconvolution),
Wiener wavelets shaping,
convolution,
crosscorrelation,
autocorrelation,
data resampling with sinc interpolation,
fractional derivatives/integrals,
median filtering,
time varying filtering.
The programs that are provided to meet these needs are:
SUFILTER - applies a zero-phase, sine-squared tapered filter
SUBFILT - apply Butterworth bandpass filter
SUACOR - auto-correlation
SUCONV, SUXCOR - convolution, correlation with a user-supplied filter
SUPEF - Wiener predictive error filtering
SUSHAPE - Wiener shaping filter
SURESAMP - Resample in time,

66

CHAPTER 5. GENERAL OPERATIONS ON SU DATA

SUFRAC take general (fractional) time derivative or integral of data, plus a phase shift. Input
is TIME DOMAIN data.
SUMEDIAN - MEDIAN filter about a user-defined polygonal curve with the distance along the
curve specified by key header word
SUTVBAND - time-variant bandpass filter (sine-squared taper)

5.4.1

SUFILTER - applies a zero-phase, sine-squared tapered filter

The program sufilter provides a general purpose zero-phase filtering capability for the usual tasks of
bandpass, bandreject, lowpass, highpass, and notch filtering. Examples of each of these using sufilter
data are provided
% suplane | sufilter f=10,20,30,60 amps=0,1,1,0 | suxwigb title="10,20,30,60 hz bandpass"

&

% suplane | sufilter f=10,20,30,60 amps=1,0,0,1 | suxwigb title="10,20,30,60 hz bandreject"

% suplane | sufilter f=10,20,30,60 amps=1,1,0,0 | suxwigb title="10,20 hz lowpass"

% suplane | sufilter f=50,60,70 amps=1,0,1 | suxwigb title="60 hz notch"

&

&

&

The filter is polygonal, with the corners of the polygon defined by the vector of frequency values
defined by array of f= values, and a collection of amplitude values, defined by the array of amps=
values. The amplitudes may be any floating point numbers greater than, or equal to zero. The only
rule is that there must be the same number of amps values, as f values. The segments are sine-squared
tapered between f values of different amplitude. It is best to select bf f values such that tapering to zero
is done over an octave to prevent ringing.
With suplane, sufilter provides a way of easily generating bandlimited testpattern data in SU
format.

5.4.2

SUBFILT - apply Butterworth bandpass filter

An alternative to sufilter is subfilt, which applies a Butterworth filter to data.

% suplane | subfilt fstoplo=10 fpasslo=20 fpasshi=30 fstophi=60 | suxwigb title="10,20,30,60 hz

\subsection{SUACOR - auto-correlation}
This program is used to compute the autocorrelation of a trace.
This process is useful to see the size of a wavelet, or the repetitions
of the wavelet, as an aid in choosing the {\bf maxlag\/} parameter
of {\bf supef}. {\bf Suacor\/} is also useful for determining the
frequency range of data in terms of the power spectrum. For example
try
{\small \begin{verbatim}
% suplane | sufilter | suacor | suspecfx | suxwigb &

ba

5.4. 1D FILTERING OPERATIONS

5.4.3

67

SUCONV, SUXCOR - convolution, correlation with a user-supplied

filter

The standard operations of convolution and cross correlation may be performed with suconv and suxcor, respectively. The filter may be supplied as a vector input on the commandline, or as a file containing
a single trace in SU format. In addition to taking the input as a single trace, it is possible to supply a
panel of filters, each to be used trace by trace on a panel of SU data.
An example of correlating a vibroseis sweep may be seen by creating vibroseis-like data, with suvibro, suplane and suconv. To make vibroseis suplane data
% suvibro > junk.vib.su
% suplane | suconv sufile=junk.vib.su > plane.vib.su
Because surange tells us that
% surange < junk.vib.su
1 traces:
tracl=1 ns=2500 dt=4000 sfs=10 sfe=60
slen=10000 styp=1
there are 2500 samples on the vibroseis sweep, we can do the following correlation
%

suxcor < plane.vib.su sufile=junk.vib.su |

suwind itmin=2500 itmax=2563 | sushw key=delrt a=0.0 > data.su
(this line is broken to make it fit on the page here, the real
command is typed on a single line)

The value of itmin=sweeplength and itmax=sweeplength+nsout where nsout is the number of

samples expected in the output. The final step using sushw is to set the trace delay to 0. Choosing itmin=sweeplength will ensure that the data start at the correct value. Choosing nsout=sweeplengthnsin, where nsin is the number of samples in the input, will yield the correct number of samples to
keep.

5.4.4

SUPEF - Wiener predictive error filtering

The prediction error filtering method, also known as Wiener filtering, is the principle process of traditional Wiener-Levinson deconvolution. The reason that this subsection is not headed deconvolution
is because there are two additional issues that have to be addressed before prediction error filtering can
be used for effective deconvolution. These issues are preprocessing of the data, and postprocess filtering.
Indeed, much feedback has come back claiming that supef doesnt work properly, when in fact, it simply
being used improperly. (This is our fault, for not supplying sufficient documentation.)
Using supef , itself, generally requires that the value of maxlag be set. This may be determined by
first establishing the size of the wavelet being spiked, through application suacor.
As the preprocessing step, you will probably need to use sugain to remove any decay in amplitudes
with time that may result from geometric spreading.
As a postprocessing step, you need to remove any increase in frequency content which has occurred
due to the whitening effect of the prediction error filter. The demos in the demos/Deconvolution directory
demonstrate the functioning of the program. However, these examples are a bit unrealistic for field data.
For example, in the demos, the data are spiked, and then reverberations are removed via a cascaded of
supef calls with maxlag=.04 and minlag=.05 maxlag=.16, respectively. However on field data, we
would probably only use a single pass of the filter to remove reverberations, or to spike arrivals.
The prediction error filter has a spectral whitening effect, which is likely to put high frequencies in
the data that were not there originally. These must be filtered out. It is a good idea to assume that
there is a loss of frequency information, and design the parameters for the postprocessing filtering, using
sufilter to slightly reduce the frequency content from its original values.

68

CHAPTER 5. GENERAL OPERATIONS ON SU DATA

Also, an added feature of the Release 32 version of supef is the mixing parameter, which permits
the user to apply a weighted moving average to the autocorrelations that are computed as part of the
prediction error filter computation. This can provide additional stability to the operation.

5.4.5

SUSHAPE - Wiener shaping filter

The demos in demos/Deconvolution also contain a demonstration of the Wiener shaping filter sushape.

2D Filtering Operations
Filtering in the (k1,k2) domain, and the (F,K) domain is often useful for changing dip information in
data. The programs
SUKFILTER - radially symmetric K-domain, sin2-tapered, polygonal filter
SUK1K2FILTER - symmetric box-like K-domain filter defined by the cartesian product of two
sin2-tapered polygonal filters defined in k1 and k2
SUKFRAC - apply FRACtional powers of ik to data, with phase shift
SUDIPFILT - DIPor betterSLOPE Filter in f-k domain
provide the beginnings of a set of K-domain and F-K-domain filtering operations.

5.4.6

SURESAMP - Resample Data in Time

Often data need to be resampled to either reduce or increase the number of samples for processing or
data storage. For seismic data, the smart way of doing this is by the method of sinc interpolation. The
program suresamp
SURESAMP - Resample in time
performs this operation.
See the demos in $CWPROOT/src/demos/Filtering for further information about filtering in SU.

Chapter 6

Seismic Modeling Utilities

An important aspect of seismic exploration and research are programs for creating synthetic data. Such
programs find their use, both in the practical problem of modeling real data, as well as in the testing of
new processing programs. A processing program that will not work on idealized model data will likely
not work on real seismic data.
Another important aspect of modeling programs is the fact that many seismic processing algorithms
(such as migration) may be viewed as inverse processes. The first step in such an inverse problem may
be to create a method to solve the forward problem, and then formulate the solution to the inverse
problem as a backpropagation of the recorded data to its position in the subsurface.
There are two parts to the seismic modeling task. The first part is the construction of background
wavespeed profiles, which may consist of uniformly sampled arrays of floating point numbers. The second
part is the construction of the synthetic wave information which propagates in that wavespeed profile.
Because of the intimate relationship between seismic modeling and seismic processing, background
wavespeed profiles created for modelling tasks, may also be useful for processing tasks.
Of course, if some simple assumptions are made, it may be possible for background wavespeed
information to be built into the modeling program.

6.1

Background Wavespeed Profiles

There are many approaches to creating background wavespeed profiles. For many processes, it may be
that a simple array of floating point numbers, each representing the wavespeed, slowness (1/wavespeed),
or sloth (slowness squared) on a uniformly sampled grid will be sufficient.
However, more advanced techniques may involve wavespeed profile generation in triangulated or
tetrahedrized media.

6.2

Uniformly Sampled Models

In Seismic Unix there are several programs which may be used to generate background wavespeed profile
data. Often, such data need to be smoothed.
These programs are:
UNISAM - UNIformly SAMple a function y(x) specified as x,y pair
UNISAM2 - UNIformly SAMple a 2-D function f(x1,x2)
MAKEVEL - MAKE a VELocity function v(x,y,z)
UNIF2 - generate a 2-D UNIFormly sampled velocity profile from a layered model. In each layer,
velocity is a linear function of position.

69

70

CHAPTER 6. SEISMIC MODELING UTILITIES

SMOOTHINT2 - SMOOTH non-uniformly sampled INTerfaces, via the damped least-squares
technique
SMOOTH2 - SMOOTH a uniformly sampled 2d array of data, within a user- defined window, via
a damped least squares technique
SMOOTH3D - 3D grid velocity SMOOTHing by the damped least squares

Please see the selfdoc of each of these programs for further information. Also see the demos in
$CWPROOT/src/Velocity Profiles

6.3

Synthetic Data Generators

There are a number of programs for generating synthetic seismic and seismic-like data in the SU package.
These are
SUPLANE - create common offset data file with up to 3 planes
SUSPIKE - make a small spike data set
SUIMP2D - generate shot records for a line scatterer embedded in three dimensions using the
Born integral equation
SUIMP3D - generate inplane shot records for a point scatterer embedded in three dimensions
using the Born integral equation
SUFDMOD2 - Finite-Difference MODeling (2nd order) for acoustic wave equation
SUSYNCZ - SYNthetic seismograms for piecewise constant V(Z) function True amplitude (primaries only) modeling for 2.5D
SUSYNLV - SYNthetic seismograms for Linear Velocity function
SUSYNVXZ - SYNthetic seismograms of common offset V(X,Z) media via Kirchhoff-style modeling
SUSYNLVCW - SYNthetic seismograms for Linear Velocity function for mode Converted Waves
SUSYNVXZCS - SYNthetic seismograms of common shot in V(X,Z) media via Kirchhoff-style
modeling
Of these, only sufdmod2, susynvxz, and sysnvxzcs require an file of input wavespeed. The other programs
use commandline arguments for wavespeed model input.
Please see the demos in $CWPROOT/src/demos/Synthetic for further information. Also, a number
of the other demos use these programs for synthetic data generation.

6.4

Delaunay Triangulation

More sophisticated methods of synthetic data generation use assumptions regarding the nature of the
medium (as represented by the input wavespeed profile data format) to expedite computations of the
synthetic data. One such method is triangulation via the Delaunay method.

6.5. TETRAHEDRAL METHODS

6.4.1

71

Triangulated Model Building

There are two way of making triangulated models. The first is to explicitly input boundary coordinates
and wavespeed (actually sloth values) with trimodel. The second is to make a uniformly sampled
model, perhaps with one of the model building utilities above, and then use uni2tri to convert the uniformly sampled model to a triangulated model. (Please note, that this will work better if the wavespeed
model is smoothed, prior to conversion.) These programs are
TRIMODEL - make a triangulated sloth (1/velocity squared) model
UNI2TRI - convert UNIformly sampled model to a TRIangulated model
TRI2UNI - convert a TRIangulated model to UNIformly sampled model

6.4.2

Synthetic Seismic Data in Triangulated Media

Several programs make use of triangulated models to create ray tracing, or ray-trace based synthetic
seismograms. There is also a code to create Gaussian beam synthetic seismograms in a triangulated
medium. These programs are:
NORMRAY - dynamic ray tracing for normal incidence rays in a sloth model
TRIRAY - dynamic RAY tracing for a TRIangulated sloth model
GBBEAM - Gaussian beam synthetic seismograms for a sloth model
TRISEIS - Synthetic seismograms for a sloth model
There is a comprehensive set of demos located in the directory $CWPROOT/src/Synthetic/Tri and
$CWPROOT/src/Synthetic/Trielas

6.5

Tetrahedral Methods

Some new functionality will be entering SU in future releases for tetrahedral model building and ray
tracing in tetrahedral models. One code that is in the current release is
TETRAMOD - TETRAhedron MODel builder. In each layer, velocity gradient is constant or a
2-D grid; horizons could be a uniform grid and/or added by a 2-D grid specified.

72

CHAPTER 6. SEISMIC MODELING UTILITIES

Chapter 7

Seismic Processing Utilities

There are a collection of operations which are uniquely seismic in nature, representing operations which
are designed to perform some aspect of the involved process which takes seismic data and converts it
into images of the earth.
stacking data,
picking data,
velocity analysis,
normal moveout correction,
dip moveout correction,
seismic migration and related operations.

7.1

SUSTACK, SURECIP, SUDIVSTACK - Stacking Data

SUSTACK - stack adjacent traces having the same key header word,
SURECIP - sum opposing offsets in prepared data,
SUDIVSTACK - Diversity Stacking using either average power or peak power within windows

7.2

SUVELAN, SUNMO - Velocity Analysis and Normal Moveout Correction

SUVELAN - compute stacking velocity semblance for cdp gathers

SUNMO - NMO for an arbitrary velocity function of time and CDP
Please see the demos in $CWPROOT/src/demos/Velocity Analysis and $CWPROOT/src/demos/NMO
for further information.

7.3

SUDMOFK, SUDMOTX, SUDMOVZ - Dip Moveout Correction

Dip-moveout is a data transformation which converts data recorded with offset to zero offset data. The
following programs

73

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CHAPTER 7. SEISMIC PROCESSING UTILITIES

SUDMOFK - DMO via F-K domain (log-stretch) method for common-offset gathers
SUDMOTX - DMO via T-X domain (Kirchhoff) method for common-offset gathers
SUDMOVZ - DMO for V(Z) media for common-offset gathers

perform this operation.

7.4

Seismic Migration

The subject of seismic migration is one of the most varied in seismic data processing. Many algorthms
have been developed to perform this task. Methods include Kirchhoff, Stolt, Finite-Difference, Fourier
Finite-Difference, and several types of Phase-Shift or Gazdag Migration.
Please see the demos in $CWPROOT/src/demos/Migration for further information.

7.4.1

SUGAZMIG, SUMIGPS, SUMIGPSPI, SUMIGSPLIT - Phase Shift

Migration

SUGAZMIG - SU version of Jeno GAZDAGs phase-shift migration for zero-offset data.

SUMIGPS - MIGration by Phase Shift with turning rays
SUMIGPSPI - Gazdags phase-shift plus interpolation migration for zero-offset data, which can
handle the lateral velocity variation.
SUMIGSPLIT - Split-step depth migration for zero-offset data.

7.4.2

SUKDMIG2D, SUMIGTOPO2D, SUDATUMK2DR, SUDATUMK2DS

- 2D Kirchhoff Migration, and Datuming

SUKDMIG2D - Kirchhoff Depth Migration of 2D poststack/prestack data

SUDATUMK2DR - Kirchhoff datuming of receivers for 2D prestack data (shot gathers are the
input)
SUDATUMK2DS - Kirchhoff datuming of sources for 2D prestack data (input data are receiver
gathers)
SUMIGTOPO2D - Kirchhoff Depth Migration of 2D postack/prestack data from the (variable
topography) recording surface

7.4.3

SUMIGFD, SUMIGFFD - Finite-Difference Migration

SUMIGFD - 45 and 60 degree Finite difference migration for zero-offset data.

SUMIGFFD - Fourier finite difference migration for zero-offset data. This method is a hybrid
migration which combines the advantages of phase shift and finite difference migrations.

7.4.4

SUMIGTK - Time-Wavenumber Domain Migration

This algorthm was created by Dave Hale on the fly and, as far as we know, exists nowhere in else
geophysical literature.
SUMIGTK - MIGration via T-K domain method for common-midpoint stacked data

7.4.5

SUSTOLT - Stolt Migration

This is the classic F-K migration method of Clayton Stolt.

SUSTOLT - Stolt migration for stacked data or common-offset gathers

Chapter 8

Processing Flows with SU

8.1

SU and UNIX

You need not learn a special seismic language to use SU. If you know how to use UNIX shell-redirecting
and pipes, you are ready to start using SUthe seismic commands and options can be used just as you
would use the built-in UNIX commands. In particular, you can write ordinary UNIX shell scripts to
combine frequent command combinations into meta-commands (i.e., processing flows). These scripts
can be thought of as job files.

Table 8.1: UNIX Symbols

process1
process2
process3
process4
process6

< file1
> file2
>> file3
| process5
<< text

process1 takes input from file1

process2 writes on (new) file2
process3 appends to file3
output of process4 is input to process5
take input from following lines

So lets begin with a capsule review of the basic UNIX operators as summarized in Table 8.1. The
symbols <, >, and >> are known as redirection operators, since they redirect input and output into
or out of the command (i.e., process). The symbol | is called a pipe, since we can picture data flowing
from one process to another through the pipe. Here is a simple SU pipeline with input indata
and output outdata:
sufilter f=4,8,42,54 <indata |
sugain tpow=2.0 >outdata
This example shows a band-limiting operation being piped into a gaining operation. The input data
set indata is directed into the program sufilter with the < operator, and similarly, the output data set
outdata receives the data because of the > operator. The output of sufilter is connected to the input
of sugain by use of the | operator.
The strings with the = signs illustrate how parameters are passed to SU programs. The program
sugain receives the assigned value 2.0 to its parameter tpow, while the program sufilter receives the
assigned four component vector to its parameter f. To find out what the valid parameters are for a given
program, we use the self-doc facility.
By the way, space around the UNIX redirection and pipe symbols is optionalthe example shows
one popular style. On the other hand, spaces around the = operator are not permitted.
The first four symbols in Table 8.1 are the basic grammar of UNIX; the final << entry is the symbol
for the less commonly used here document redirection. Despite its rarity in interactive use, SU shell
programs are significantly enhanced by appropriate use of the << operatorwe will illustrate this below.

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CHAPTER 8. PROCESSING FLOWS WITH SU

Many built-in UNIX commands do not have a self-documentation facility like SUsinstead, most
do have man pages. For example,
% man cat
CAT(1)

UNIX Programmers Manual

CAT(1)

NAME
cat - catenate and print
SYNOPSIS
cat [ -u ] [ -n ] [ -s ] [ -v ] file ...
DESCRIPTION
Cat reads each file in sequence and displays it on the standard output. Thus
cat file
displays the file on the standard output, and
cat file1 file2 >file3
--More-You need to know a bit more UNIX lore to use SU efficientlywell introduce these tricks of the trade
in the context of the examples discussed later in this chapter.

8.2

Understanding and using SU shell programs

The essence of good SU usage is constructing (or cloning!) UNIX shell programs to create and record
processing flows. In this section, we give some annotated examples to get you started.

8.2.1

A simple SU processing flow example

Most SU programs read from standard input and write to standard output. Therefore, one can build
complex processing flows by simply connecting SU programs with UNIX pipes. Most flows will end
with one of the SU plotting programs. Because typical processing flows are lengthy and involve many
parameter settings, it is convenient to put the SU commands in a shell file.
Remark: All the UNIX shells, Bourne (sh), Cshell (csh), Korn (ksh), . . . , include a programming
language. In this document, we exclusively use the Bourne shell programming language.
Our first example is a simple shell program called Plot. The numbers in square brackets at the end
of the lines in the following listing are not part of the shell programwe added them as keys to the
discussion that follows the listing.
#! /bin/sh
# Plot:
Plot a range of cmp gathers
# Author: Jane Doe
# Usage: Plot cdpmin cdpmax

[1]

data=$HOME/data/cmgs

[2]

8.2. UNDERSTANDING AND USING SU SHELL PROGRAMS

# Plot the cmp gather.

suwind <$data key=cdp min=$1 max=$2 |
sugain tpow=2 gpow=.5 |
suximage f2=0 d2=1 \
label1="Time (sec)" label2="Trace number" \
title="CMP Gathers $1 to $2" \
perc=99 grid1=solid &

77

[3]
[4]

[5]

Discussion of numbered lines:

1. The symbol # is the comment symbolanything on the remainder of the line is not executed by the
UNIX shell. The combination #! is an exception to this rule: the shell uses the file name following
this symbol as a path to the program that is to execute the remainder of the shell program.
2. The author apparently intends that the shell be edited if it is necessary to change the data set
she made this easier to do by introducing the shell variable data and assigning to it the full
pathname of the data file. The assigned value of this parameter is accessed as $data within the
shell program. The parameter $HOME appearing as the first component of the file path name is
a UNIX maintained environment variable containing the path of the users home directory. In
general, there is no need for the data to be located in the users home directory, but the user
would need read permission on the data file for the shell program to succeed.
WARNING! Spaces are significant to the UNIX shellit uses them to parse command lines. So
despite all weve learned about making code easy to read, do not put spaces next to the = symbol.
(Somewhere around 1977, one authors (Jack) first attempt to learn UNIX was derailed for several
weeks by making this mistake.)
3. The main pipeline of this shell code selects a certain set of cmp gathers with suwind, gains this
subset with sugain and pipes the result into the plotting program suximage. As indicated in
the Usage comment, the cmp range is specified by command line arguments. Within the shell
program, these arguments are referenced as $1, $2 (i.e., first argument, second argument).
4. The lines within the suximage command are continued by the backslash escape character.
WARNING! The line continuation backslash must be the final character on the linean invisible
space or tab following the backslash is one of the most common and frustrating bugs in UNIX
shell programming.
5. The final & in the shell program puts the plot window into background so we can continue
working in our main window. This is the X-Windows usagethe & should not be used with the
analogous PostScript plotting programs (e.g., supsimage). For example, with supsimage in place
of suximage, the & might be replaced by | lpr.
The SU plotting programs are specialtheir self-doc doesnt show all the parameters accepted.
For example, most of the parameters accepted by suximage are actually specified in the selfdocumentation for the generic CWP plotting program ximage. This apparent flaw in the selfdocumentation is actually a side effect of a key SU design decision. The SU graphics programs call
on the generic plotting programs to do the actual plotting. The alternative design was to have
tuned graphics programs for various seismic applications. Our design choice keeps things simple,
but it implies a basic limitation in SUs graphical capabilities.
The plotting programs are the vehicle for presenting your results. Therefore you should take
the time to carefully look through the self-documentation for both the SU jacket programs
(suximage, suxwigb, . . . ) and the generic plotting programs (ximage, xwigb, . . . ).

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8.2.2

CHAPTER 8. PROCESSING FLOWS WITH SU

Executing shell programs

The simplest way to execute a UNIX shell program is to give it execute permission. For example, to
make our above Plot shell program executable:
chmod +x Plot
Then to execute the shell program:
Plot 601 610
Here we assume that the parameters cdpmin=601, cdpmax=610 are appropriate values for the cmgs data
set. Figure 8.1 shows an output generated by the Plot shell program.
Trace number
0

100

200

Time (sec)

CMP Gathers 601 to 610

Figure 8.1: Output of the Plot shell program.

8.2.3

A typical SU processing flow

Suppose you want to use sudmofk. Youve read the self-doc, but a detailed example is always welcome
isnt it? The place to look is the directory su/examples. In this case, we are lucky and find the shell
program, Dmo. Again, the numbers in square brackets at the end of the lines shown below are not part
of the listing.
#! /bin/sh
# dmo
set -x

[1]

# set parameters
input=cdp201to800

[2]

8.2. UNDERSTANDING AND USING SU SHELL PROGRAMS

temp=dmocogs
output=dmocmgs
smute=1.7
vnmo=1500,1550,1700,2000,2300,2600,3000
tnmo=0.00,0.40,1.00,2.00,3.00,4.00,6.00

# sort to common-offset, nmo, dmo, inverse-nmo, sort back to cmp

susort <$input offset cdp |
sunmo smute=$smute vnmo=$vnmo tnmo=$tnmo |
sudmofk cdpmin=201 cdpmax=800 dxcdp=13.335 noffmix=4 verbose=1 |
sunmo invert=1 smute=$smute vnmo=$vnmo tnmo=$tnmo >$temp
susort <$temp cdp offset >$output

79

[3]

[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]

Discussion of numbered lines:

The core of the shell program (lines 5-7) is recognized as the typical dmo process: crude nmo, dmo,
and then inverse nmo. The dmo processing is surrounded by sorting operations (lines 4 and 8). Here
is a detailed discussion of the shell program keyed to the numbers appended to the listing (see also the
discussion above for the Plot shell):
1. Set a debugging mode that asks UNIX to echo the lines that are executed. You can comment
this line off when its output is no longer of interest. An alternate debugging flag is set -v which
echos lines as they are read by the shell interpreter. You can use both modes at once if you like.
2. This line and the next two lines set filenames that, in this case, are in the same directory as the
shell program itself. Again, the reason for using parameters here is to make it easy to clone
the shell for use with other data sets. Those of us who work with only a few data sets at any
given time, find it convenient to devote a directory to a given data set and keep the shells used to
process the data in that directory as documentation of the processing parameters used. (SU does
not have a built-in history mechanism.)
3. The dmo process requires a set of velocity-time picks for the subsidiary nmo processes. Because
these picks must be consistent between the nmo and the inverse nmo, it is a good idea to make
them parameters to avoid editing mistakes. Again, note the format of SU parameter vectors:
comma-separated strings with no spaces. The nmo program (sunmo) will give an error message
and abort if the vnmo and tnmo vectors have different lengths.
4. Note that susort allows the use of secondary sort keys. Do not assume that a secondary field
that is initially in the right order will remain in that order after the sortif you care about the
order of some secondary field, specify it (as this shell program does). In this line, we sort the data
according to increasing offsets and then, within each offset, we sort according to increasing cdp
number.
5. The forward nmo step.
6. The dmo step.
7. The inverse nmo step.
8. Sort back to cdp and have increasing offset within each cdp.
If you want to thoroughly understand this shell program, your next step is to study the self-docs of
the programs involved:
% sunmo
SUNMO - NMO for an arbitrary velocity function of time and CDP

80

CHAPTER 8. PROCESSING FLOWS WITH SU

sunmo <stdin >stdout [optional parameters]

Optional Parameters:
vnmo=2000
NMO velocities corresponding to times in tnmo
tnmo=0
NMO times corresponding to velocities in vnmo
...
Related shell programs are su/examples/Nmostack and su/examples/Mig.

8.3

Extending SU by shell programming

Shell programming can be used to greatly extend the reach of SU without writing C code. See, for
example, CvStack, FilterTest, FirstBreak, and Velan in su/examples.
It is a sad fact that the UNIX shell is not a high level programming languageconsequently, effective
shell coding often involves arcane tricks. In this section, well provide some useful templates for some of
the common UNIX shell programming idioms.
We use CvStack as an illustration. The core of this shell is a double loop over velocities and cdps
that produces velocity panelsa concept not contained in any single SU program.
Remark: For most of us, writing a shell like CvStack from scratch is a time-consuming affair. To
cut down the development time, your authors excerpt from existing shells to make new ones even when
we dont quite remember what every detail means. We suggest that you do the same!
We wont comment on the lines already explained in our previous two shell code examples (see
Sections 8.2.1 and 8.2.3), but instead focus on the new features used in CvStack.
#! /bin/sh
# Constant-velocity stack of a range of cmp gathers
# Authors: Jack, Ken
# NOTE: Comment lines preceding user input start with
set -x

#!#

#!# Set input/output file names and data parameters

input=cdp601to610
stackdata=cvstack
cdpmin=601 cdpmax=610
fold=30
space=1
# 1 null trace between panels
#!# Determine velocity sampling.
vmin=1500
vmax=3000
dv=150
### Determine ns and dt from data (for sunull)
nt=sugethw ns <$input | sed 1q | sed s/.*ns=//
dt=sugethw dt <$input | sed 1q | sed s/.*dt=//
### Convert dt to seconds from header value in microseconds
dt=bc -l <<END
scale=4
$dt / 1000000
END

[1]

[2]

8.3. EXTENDING SU BY SHELL PROGRAMMING

### Do the velocity analyses.

>$stackdata # zero output file
v=$vmin
while [ $v -le $vmax ]
do
cdp=$cdpmin
while [ $cdp -le $cdpmax ]
do
suwind <$input \
key=cdp min=$cdp max=$cdp count=$fold |
sunmo cdp=$cdp vnmo=$v tnmo=0.0 |
sustack >>$stackdata
cdp=bc -l <<END
$cdp + 1
END
done
sunull ntr=$space nt=$nt dt=$dt >>$stackdata
v=bc -l <<END
$v + $dv
END
done

### Plot the common velocity stacked data

ncdp=bc -l <<END
$cdpmax-$cdpmin+1
END
f2=$vmin
d2=bc -l <<END
$dv/($ncdp + $space)
END

81

[3]
[4]

[5]
[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

sugain <$stackdata tpow=2.0 |

suximage perc=99 f2=$f2 d2=$d2 \
title="File: $input Constant-Velocity Stack " \
label1="Time (s)" label2="Velocity (m/s)" &
exit

[10]

Discussion of numbered lines:

1. This elaborate construction gets some information from the first trace header of the data set. The
program sugethw lists the values of the specified keys in the successive traces. For example,
% suplane | sugethw tracl ns
tracl=1
ns=64
tracl=2

ns=64

tracl=3

ns=64

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CHAPTER 8. PROCESSING FLOWS WITH SU

tracl=4

ns=64

tracl=5

ns=64

tracl=6

ns=64

...
Although sugethw is eager to give the values for every trace in the data set, we only need it once.
The solution is to use the UNIX stream editor (sed). In fact, we use it twice. By default, sed
passes along its input to its output. Our first use is merely to tell sed to quit after it puts the first
line in the pipe. The second pass through sed strips off the unwanted material before the integer.
In detail, the second sed command reads: replace (or substitute) everything up to the characters
ns= with nothing, i.e., delete those characters.
2. We are proud of this trick. The Bourne shell does not provide floating point arithmetic. Where
this is needed, we use the UNIX built-in bc calculator program with the here document facility.
Here, we make the commonly needed conversion of sampling interval which is given in microseconds in the SEG-Y header, but as seconds in SU codes. Note carefully the backquotes around
the entire calculationwe assign the result of this calculation to the shell variable on the left of
the equal sign, here dt. The calculation may take several lines. We first set the number of decimal
places with scale=4 and then do the conversion to seconds. The characters END that follow the
here document redirection symbol << are arbitrary, the shell takes its input from the text in the
shell file until it comes to a line that contains the same characters again. For more information
about bc:
% man bc
3. As the comment indicates, this is a special use of the output redirection symbol that has the effect
of destroying any pre-existing file of the same name or opening a new file with that name. In fact,
this is what > always does as its first actionits a dangerous operator! If you intend to append,
then, as mentioned earlier, use >>.
4. This is the outer loop over velocities. Another warning about spacesthe spaces around the
bracket symbols are essential.
Caveat: The bracket notation is a nice alternative to the older clunky test notation:
while test $v -le $vmax
Because the bracket notation is not documented on the typical sh manual page, we have some
qualms about using it. But, as far as we know, all modern sh commands support itplease let
us know if you find one that doesnt.
WARNING! OK, now you know that there is a UNIX command called test. So dont use the
name test for one of your shell (or C) programsdepending on your $PATH setting, you could
be faced with seemingly inexplicable output.
5. This is the inner loop over cdps.
6. Reminder: No spaces or tabs after the line continuation symbol!
7. Notice that we broke the nice indentation structure by putting the final END against the left
margin. Thats because the sh manual page says that the termination should contain only the
END (or whatever you use). In fact, most versions support indentation. We didnt think the added
beautification was worth the risk in a shell meant for export. Also note that we used bc for an
integer arithmetic calculation even though integer arithmetic is built into the Bourne shellwhy
learn two arcane rituals, when one will do? See man expr, if you are curious.

8.3. EXTENDING SU BY SHELL PROGRAMMING

1500
0

2000

Velocity (m/s)
2500

83

3000

Time (s)

File: cdp601to610 Constant-Velocity Stack

Figure 8.2: Output of the CvStack shell program.

84

CHAPTER 8. PROCESSING FLOWS WITH SU

8. sunull is a program I (Jack) wrote to create all-zero traces to enhance displays of the sort produced
by CvStack. Actually, I had written this program many times, but this was the first time I did it
on purpose. (Yes, that was an attempt at humor.)
9. An arcane calculation to get velocity labeling on the trace axis. Very impressive! I wonder what
it means? (See last item.)

10. The exit statement is useful because you might want to save some spare parts for future use.
If so, just put them after the exit statement and they wont be executed.
Figure 8.2 shows an output generated by CvStack.

Chapter 9

Answers to Frequently Asked

Questions
This chapter addresses questions often asked by new SU users. Some answers refer to the directory
CWPROOT. We use this symbolic name for the directory that contains the CWP/SU source code, include
files, libraries, and executables. You are asked to specify this directory name during the SU installation
procedure.

9.1

Installation questions

Complete information about the installation process is found in the README files supplied with the
distribution. Here we discuss only some commonly found installation problems.
Question 1 I get error messages about missing fgetpos and fsetpos routines, even though I am using
the GCC compiler. How do I get around this problem?
Answer 1 Weve seen this problem most often with older SUN OS 4.xx (pre-SOLARIS). These SUN
systems may not have the fgetpos and fsetpos subroutines defined. Because these two routines are
not currently used in the SU package, we have modified the installation process to permit the user
to define a compile-time flag to circumvent this problem. Please uncomment the OPTC line in the
paragraph in Makefile.config that looks like this:
# For SUN installing with GCC compiler but without GLIBC libraries
#OPTC = -O -DSUN_A -DSUN
and do a make remake.
Question 2 I get error messages regarding missing strtoul, and/or strerror routines, even though I
am using the GCC compiler. How do I get around this problem?
Answer 2 Again, this is most often seen with the older SUN OS. The fix is the same as for the previous
question.
Question 3 Why do I get missing subroutine messages about ANSI C routines? Isnt the GCC compiler
supposed to be an ANSI compiler?
Answer 3 The GCC compiler is just that, a compiler. It draws on the libraries that are present on
the machine. If the GNU libraries (this is the glibc package) have not been installed, then the GCC
compiler will use the libraries that are native to the machine you are running on. Because the four
routines listed above are not available in the SUN 4. OS, GCC does not recognize them. However,
installing the GNU libraries will make the GCC compiler behave as a full ANSI C compiler.

85

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CHAPTER 9. ANSWERS TO FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Question 4 Why do I get missing subroutine messages about ANSI C routines? I cant get the code to
compile because my compiler cant find bzero or bcopy, how can I fix this?
Answer 4 You really shouldnt be having this problem, because we try to keep to the ANSI standard,
but sometimes old style function calls creep in. The problem of rooting these things out is exacerbated
because many systems still support the old style calls.
If you have trouble installing because your compiler cant find bcopy or bzero make the following
replacements.
Replace all statements of the form
bzero( a, b);
with statements of the form:
memset( (void *) a , (int) \0, b );
Please replace all instances of statements of the form of:
bcopy ( a , b, c);
with a statements of the form:
memcpy( (void *) b, (const void *) a, c );

9.2

Data format questions

In this section, we address questions about converting data that are in various formats into SU format.
Question 5 What is the data format that SU programs expect?
Answer 5 The SU data format is based on, (but is not exactly the same as) the SEG-Y format. The SU
format consists of data traces each of which has a header. The SU trace header is identical to SEG-Y trace
header. Both the header and the trace data are written in the native binary format of your machine.
You will need to use segyread to convert SEGY data to SU data.
Caution: The optional fields in the SEG-Y trace header are used for different purposes at different sites.
SU itself makes use of certain of these fields. Thus, you may need to use segycleansee the answer to
Question 7. SU format does not have the binary and ebcdic tape headers that are part of the SEG-Y
format.
After installing the package, you can get more information on the SEG-Y/SU header by typing:
% sukeyword -o
This lists the include file segy.h that defines the SU trace header.
Question 6 Is there any easy way of adding necessary SEG-Y information to our own modeled data to
prepare our data for processing using the SU package?
Answer 6 It depends on the details of how your data was written to the file:
1. If you have a datafile that is in the form of binary floating point numbers of the type that would
be created by a C program, then use suaddhead to put SU (SEG-Y) trace headers on the data.
Example:
% suaddhead < datafile

ns=N_SAMP > data.su

9.2. DATA FORMAT QUESTIONS

87

Here, N_SAMP is the (integer) number of samples per trace in the data.
2. If your data are Fortran-style floats, then you would use:
% suaddhead < datafile ftn=1 ns=NS > data.su
See also, Question 10.
3. If your data are ASCII, then use:
% a2b n1=N1 < data.ascii | suaddhead ns=NS > data.su
Here N1 is the number of floats per line in the file data.ascii.
4. If you have some other data type, then you may use:
% recast < data.other in=IN out=float | suaddhead ns=NS > data.su
where IN is the type (int, double, char, etc...)
For further information, consult the self-docs of the programs suaddhead, a2b, and recast.
Question 7 I used segyread to read a SEG-Y tape. Everything seems to work fine, but when I plot my
data with suximage, the window is black. What did I do wrong?
Answer 7 When you read an SEG-Y tape, you need to pipe the data through segyclean to zero the
optional SEG-Y trace header field. If the SU programs see nonzero values in certain parts of the optional
field, they try to display the data as nonseismic data, using those values to set the plot parameters.
Another possibility is that there are a few data values that are so large that they are overwhelming
the 256 gray scale levels in the graphics. The way to get around this problem is to set perc=99 in the
graphics program. For example:
% suximage < sudata

perc=99 &

This will clip data values with size in the top 1 percentile of the total data.
Question 8 I am trying to plot data with the pswigb (or pswigp, or xwigb, or . . . ) program. I know
that I have data with n1=NSAMP and n2=NTRACES, but when I plot, I find that I have to set n1=NSAMP+60
for the plot to look even remotely correct. Why is this?
Answer 8 It is likely that you are trying to plot with the wrong tool. The input data format of the
programs, pswigb, pswigp, pscontour, pscube, psmovie, xwigb, xgraph, and xmovie, expect data to
consist of simple floating point numbers. If your data are SU data (SEG-Y) traces, then there is an
additional header at the beginning of each trace, which, on most computer architectures, is the same
number (240) of bytes as the storage for 60 floats.
To plot these data, use respectively: supswigb, supswigp, supscontour, supscube, supsmovie,
suxwigb, suxgraph, or suxmovie.
Also, it is not necessary to specify the dimensions of the data for these latter programs. The suversions of the codes determine the necessary information from the appropriate header values. (In fact,
that is all they dothe actual graphics is handled by the version without the su prefix.)
Question 9 I want to check the size of a file to see if it has the right number of values, but I am not
sure how to take the header into account. How is this done?

88

CHAPTER 9. ANSWERS TO FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Answer 9 If the file consists of simple floating point numbers, then the size in bytes equals the size
of a float times the number of samples (SIZE = 4 * N_SAMP). The SU data (SEG-Y traces) also have a
header (240 bytes per trace) giving the total number of bytes as:
(240 + 4 N_SAMP ) N_TRACES.
The byte count computed in this way is the number that the UNIX command ls -l shows.
Caveats: The above calculations assume that you have the conventional architecture and that the
header definition in segy.h has not been altered. Watch out as machines with 64 bit word size become
common!
Question 10 I have some data in Fortran form and tried to convert it to SU data via the following:
% suaddhead < data.fortran ns=N_SAMP ftn=1 > data.su
but this did not work properly. I am sure that my fortran data are in unformatted binary floats. What
should I do?
Answer 10 There are different ways of interpreting the term unformatted with regard to fortran
data. Try:
% ftnstrip < data.fortran | suaddhead ns=N_SAMP > data.su
The program ftnstrip can often succeed in converting your fortran data into C-like binary data,
even when the ftn=1 option in suaddhead fails. (Note: the program ftnunstrip may be used to take
C-style binary data and convert it to Fortran form.)
Question 11 I just successfully installed the CWP/SU package, but when I try to run the demo scripts,
I get many error messages describing programs that the shell script cannot find. How do I fix this?
Answer 11 You need to put CWPROOT/bin (where CWPROOT is /your/root/path that contains the
CWP/SU source code, include files, libraries, and executables) in your shell PATH. This is done in your
.cshrc file if you run under csh or tcsh. In Bourne shell (sh), Born Again shell (bash), or Korn shell
(ksh) the PATH variable is in your .profile file. You also need to type
% rehash
if you are running C-shell /bin/csh or TC-shell /bin/tcsh as your working shell environment, if you
have not relogged since you compiled the codes.
Question 12 How do I transfer data between SU and a commercial package, such as Promax.
Answer 12 The short answer is that you make a SEGY tape on disk file. To do convert a file called,
say, data.su to a segy file do the following:
% segyhdrs < data.su
% segywrite tape=data.segy < data.su
Now use Promax to read data.segy. This file is a Promax tape-on-disk file in IBM Real format.
Choose Promax menus accordingly.
For other commercial packages, use the appropriate commands to read a SEGY tape on disk file.
To go from the commercial package to SU follow the reverse steps. Create a file that is a SEGY tape
image and then use
% segyread tape=data.segy | segyclean > data.su

9.3. TAPE READING AND WRITING

89

Question 13 I would like to strip the trace headers off of some SU data, perform an operation of some
type on the bare traces and put the headers back on without losing any of the header information. How
do I do this?
Answer 13 Do the following:
% sustrip < data.su head=headers > data.binary
(Do whatever was desired to data.binary to make data1.binary)
% supaste < data1.binary head=headers > data1.su

Question 14 I have made some data on an IBM RS6000 and have transferred it to my Linux-based
PC system. The data looks ok on the RS6000, but when I try to work with it on the PC, none of the SU
programs seem to work. What is wrong?
Answer 14 The problem you have encountered is that there are two IEEE binary formats called respectively big endian and little endian or, alternately high byte and low byte. These terms refer to
the order of the bytes that represent the data. IBM RS6000, Silicon Graphics, NeXT (black hardware),
SUN, HP, PowerPC, any Motorola chip-based platforms are big endian machines, whereas, Intel-based
PCs and Dec and Dec Alpha products are little endian platforms.
Two programs are supplied in the CWP/SU package for swapping the bytes for data transfer. These
are swapbytes and suswapbytes.
The program swapbytes is designed to permit the user to swap the bytes on binary data that are
all one type of data (floats, doubles, shorts, unsigned shorts, longs, unsigned longs, and ints).
For data that are in the SU format, the program suswapbytes is provided.
Furthermore, within the programs segyread and segywrite there are swap= flags that permit the
user to specify whether the platform they are working on are big endian or little endian platforms.
In older releases of SU there were problems with the bitwise operations that would be encountered
in the wiggle-trace drawing routines. However, these problems have been fixed via the ENDIANFLAG
that appears in Makefile.config.
Question 15 How do I convert data that are in the SEG-2 format to SEGY?
Answer 15 In $CWPROOT/src/Third Party/seg2segy there are two programs that have been made
available to us by the University of Pau in France, for this purpose. These should be easy to install on
any system where SU has been installed.
Once you have converted data.seg2 to data.segy, you may read it into the SU format via:
% segyread tape=data.segy > data.su

9.3

Tape reading and writing

This section contains frequently asked questions about reading and writing SEG-Y tapes with SU.
Tape reading/writing is more of an art than a science. Here are a few tips.
1. Make sure your tape drive is set to be variable block length. If you are on an IBM RS6000, this
means you will need to use smit to set blocksize=0 on your tape device. Having the tape drive
set to some default constant blocksize (say blocksize=1024 or 512) will foil all attempts to read
an SEG-Y tape.

90

CHAPTER 9. ANSWERS TO FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

2. To read multiple tape files on a tape, use the non rewinding device. On an RS6000 this would be
something like /dev/rmtx.1, see man mt for details.
3. If this still doesnt work, then try:
% dd if=/dev/rmtx of=temps bs=32767 conv=noerror
Here, /dev/rmtx (not the real name of the device, it varies from system to system) is your regular
(rewinding) tape device. In the option, bs=32767, we gave the right blocksize (216 + 1) for an
IBM/RS6000. Try bs=32765 (216 1) on a SUN. This will dump the entire contents of the tape
onto a single file.

Question 16 How do I write multiple SEG-Y files onto a tape?

Answer 16 Here is a shell script for writing multiple files on a tape:
#! /bin/sh
DEV=/dev/nrxt0 # non rewinding tape device
mt -f $DEV rewind
j=0
jmax=40
while test "$j" -ne "$jmax"
do
j=expr $j + 1
echo "writing tape file $j"
segywrite tape=$DEV bfile=b.$j hfile=h.$j verbose=1 buff=0 < ozdata.$j
done
exit 0

9.4

Geometry Setting

Question 17 How do I do geometry setting in SU?

Answer 17 There is a common seismic data manipulation task that often is called geometry setting
in commercial packages in which the user converts information in the survey observers logs into values
in the trace headers.
The CWP/SU package does indeed, have provisions for getting and setting header fields, as well as
computing a third header field from one or two other header fields. The programs that you need to use
for this are:
sugethw (SU get header word)
sushw (SU set header word)
suchw (SU change or compute header word)
Type the name of each program to see the self documentation of that code.
In addition, to find out what the header field keywords mentioned in these programs are: type:
sukeyword -o
You may have the information in a variety of forms. The most common and least complicated assumptions of that form will be made here.

9.4. GEOMETRY SETTING

91

The task requires the following basic steps.

1. Get your data into SU format. The SU format is not exactly SEGY, but it does preserve the
SEGY header information. If you are starting with SEGY data (either on tape, or on in the form
of a diskfile) then you use segyread to read the data into an su file format.
For tape:
% segyread tape=/dev/rmt0 bfile=data.1 header=h.1 | segyclean > data.su
For diskfile
%

segyread tape=data.segy bfile=data.1 header=h.1 | segyclean > data.su

The file data.segy is assumed here to be a tape image of segy data. You have to be careful
because some commercial software will write SEGY-like data, by mimicking the layout of the
SEGY format, but this format will not be in the true IBM tape format that SEGY is defined to
be. In Promax, if you write a SEGY file in IBM Real format, then this will be true SEGY tape
image. working on.
2. If you have your data in the SU format, then you may view the ranges of the SEGY headers
(headers that are not set will not be shown) via:
% surange < data.su
3. Data often comes with some fields already set. To dump these fields in a format that is convenient
for geometry setting, you would use sugethw in the following way:
% sugethw < data.su

output=geom

key=key1,key2,... > hfile.ascii

The strings key1,key2,... are the keywords representing the desired SEGY trace header fields.
These keywords may be listed via:
% sukeyword -o
4. Once you have dumped the desired header fields into hfile.ascii then you may edit them with the
editor of your choice. The point is that you may create a multi-column ascii file that lists the
values of specific header fields (trace by trace, as they appear in data.su) by *any* method you
wish. Each column will contain the value of a specific header field to be set.
5. Now that you have created the ascii file containing your header values, you may load these values
into data.su via:
% a2b < hfile.ascii n1=N_columns > hfile.bin
Here, N columns is the number of columns in hfile.ascii. This is to convert hfile.ascii to a binary
file.
Now use:
% sushw < data.su key=key1,key2,... infile=hfile.bin > data1.su
Here key1,key2,... are the appropriate keywords representing the fields being set, listed in the
exact order the values appear, column by column in hfile.ascii.
6. If you want to compute a third header field from two given header field values, then you may use:
suchw for this. Also, if the header fields that you want to set are systematic in some way (are
constant for each trace or vary linearly across a gather), then you dont have to use the infile=
option. You may simply give the necessary values to sushw. See the selfdocs for sushw and suchw
for examples of these.

92

CHAPTER 9. ANSWERS TO FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

9.5

Technical Questions

Question 18 I want to resample my data so that I have half as many traces, and half as many samples.
How do I do that?
Answer 18 To resample data, you must do the following:
1. Check that you wont have aliasing. Do this by viewing the amplitude spectra of your data. Do
this with suspecfx
suspecfx < data.su | suxwigb
2. If the bandwidth of your data extends beyond the new nyquist frequency of your data (which, in
this example, will be half of the original nyquist frequency) then you will have to filter your data
to fit within its new nyquist bandwidth. Do this with sufilter
sufilter < data.su f=f1,f2,f3,f4 amps=0,1,1,0 > data.filtered.su
Here, the f1 f2 f3 f4 are the filter corner frequencies and amps=0,1,1,0 indicate that the filter
is a bandpass filter.
3. Now you may resample your data with suresamp:
suresamp < data.filtered.su nt=NTOUT dt=DTOUT > data.resampled.su
For your case, NTOUT is 1/2 of the original number of samples, and DTOUT is twice the time sampling
interval (in seconds) of that in the original data. Your output data should look quite similar to your
input data, with the exception that the bandwidth will change.

9.6

General

This section addresses general questions about the SU package.

Question 19 What are these funny words gelev, selev, fldr, etc. that I see in various places?
Answer 19 These are the keywords that are required for many of the codes. They refer to SU (Segy)
header fields.
Type:
Type:

sukeyword -o
sukeyword keyword

to see the whole list

to see the listing for an individual
keyword

Question 20 What do the terms little endian and big endian and mean?
Answer 20 There are two IEEE binary formats, called respectively little endian and big endian.
These are also called high byte and low byte, respectively. These refer to the byte order in the bitwise
representation of binary data. The following platforms are little endian: DEC and Intel-based PCs.
The other common platforms are big endian: IBM RS6000, Silicon Graphics, NeXT (black hardware),
SUN, HP, PowerPC, any Motorola chip-based platform.
Question 21 Why are CWP/SU releases given by integers (22, 23, 24, etc...) instead of the more
familiar decimal release numbers (1.1, 1.3, etc...)?

9.6. GENERAL

93

Answer 21 The CWP/SU release numbers are chosen to correspond to the SU NEWS email messages.
The individual codes in the package have traditional decimal release numbers (assigned by RCS), but
these are all different. The package changes in incremental, but non-uniform ways, so the standard
notation seems inappropriate. However, the user may view 24 to be 2.4. We may adopt this convention
in the future.
Remark: In the early days, we did use RCS to simultaneously update all the codes to 2.1, 3.1, . . . .
This practice died a natural death somewhere along the way.
Question 22 How often are the codes updated?
Answer 22 The CWP/SU package is updated at roughly 3-6 month intervals. We mail announcements
of these releases to all known users. Since we do not provide support for outdated versions, we urge you
to remain current.
Question 23 I have a complicated collection of input parameters for a CWP/SU program. I want to
run the command from the command line of a terminal window, but I dont want to retype the entire
string of input parameters. What do I do?
Answer 23 CWP/SU programs that take their input parameters from the command line also have
the feature of being able to read from a parameter file. This is invoked by setting the parameter
par=parfile, where parfile is a file containing the desired commandline string.
For example:
suplane ntr=20 nt=40 dt=.001 | ...
is completely equivalent to the command:
suplane par=parfile | ...
if the string
ntr=20 nt=40 dt=.001
is contained in parfile.
Question 24 I cant find an sudoc entry for the function ints8r, yet the SU manual says that all
library functions have online documentation? What am I doing wrong?
Answer 24 The proper search procedure for a library function (such as ints8r) is:
% sufind ints8r
Which yields:
INTSINC8 - Functions to interpolate uniformly-sampled data via 8-coeff. sinc
approximations:
ints8c

interpolation of a uniformly-sampled complex function y(x) via an

For more information type: "sudoc program_name <CR>"

The name INTSINC8 is the name of the file that contains the library function ins8c. You may now
use sudoc to find out more information via:
% sudoc intsinc8

94

CHAPTER 9. ANSWERS TO FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Which yields:

In /usr/local/cwp/src/cwp/lib:
INTSINC8 - Functions to interpolate uniformly-sampled data via 8-coeff. sinc
approximations:
ints8c
ints8r

interpolation of a uniformly-sampled complex function y(x) via an

8-coefficient sinc approximation.
Interpolation of a uniformly-sampled real function y(x) via a
table of 8-coefficient sinc approximations

Function Prototypes:
void ints8c (int nxin, float dxin, float fxin, complex yin[],
complex yinl, complex yinr, int nxout, float xout[], complex yout[]);
void ints8r (int nxin, float dxin, float fxin, float yin[],
float yinl, float yinr, int nxout, float xout[], float yout[]);
Input:
nxin
dxin
fxin
yin
yinl
yinr
nxout
xout

number of x values at which y(x) is input

x sampling interval for input y(x)
x value of first sample input
array[nxin] of input y(x) values: yin[0] = y(fxin), etc.
value used to extrapolate yin values to left of yin[0]
value used to extrapolate yin values to right of yin[nxin-1]
number of x values a which y(x) is output
array[nxout] of x values at which y(x) is output

Output:
yout

array[nxout] of output y(x):

yout[0] = y(xout[0]), etc.

Notes:
Because extrapolation of the input function y(x) is defined by the
left and right values yinl and yinr, the xout values are not restricted
to lie within the range of sample locations defined by nxin, dxin, and
fxin.
The maximum error for frequiencies less than 0.6 nyquist is less than
one percent.
Author:

Dave Hale, Colorado School of Mines, 06/02/89

Question 25 I have written my own SU programs and would like them to appear in the suname and
sudoc listings. How do I do this?
Answer 25 Run updatedocall (source code located in CWPROOT/par/shell). If you have put this
code under a new path, then you must add this path to the list of paths in the updatedoc script. For the
selfdoc information to be captured by the updatedoc script, you will need to have the following marker
lines at the beginning and end of the selfdoc and additional information portion of the source code of
your program.
/*********************** self documentation **********************/
/**************** end self doc ********************************/

9.6. GENERAL

95

Be sure to clone these directly out of an existing SU program, rather than typing them yourself, so that
the pattern is the exact one expected by the updatedoc script.
Question 26 I have a gray scale (not color) PostScript file made with psimage and would like to convert
it to a color PostScript format, but do not have the original binary data that I made the file from. How
do I do this?
Answer 26 You have to restore the binary file to make the new color PostScript file. Here is how you
do it. (Here, we are assuming a bit-mapped graphic as would be produced by psimage or supsimage).
1. Make a backup of your PostScript file.
2. edit the PostScript file removing everything but the hexidecimal binary image that makes up the
majority of the file. (Note, in the line preceeding the hexidecimal data portion of the file will be a
pair of numbers that represents the dimensions of the data. You will need these numbers for later
steps.)
3. use h2b to convert the hexidecimal file to binary
4. You will find that the file is flipped from the original input file. Use transp to flip the data. Note
that the n1 and n2 values that are used by transp are the dimensions of the input data, which are
the reverse of the output data. (The n1 value, is not the total number of samples, that is returned
by h2b, instead total no. values = n1 n2.)
5. You now have a 0-255 representation of your binary data which you should be able to plot again
any way you desire.
This method may be used to convert scanned images to SU format, as well, with the next step in
the procedure to be putting SU headers on the data with suaddhead.

96

CHAPTER 9. ANSWERS TO FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Chapter 10

How to Write an SU Program

10.1

Setting up the Makefile

The CWP/SU package uses a sophisticated Makefile structure, that you may also use when you develop
new code. You should begin any new code writing project by creating a local directory in your working
area. You should then copy the Makefile from $CWPROOT/src/su/main into that directory and make
the following changes
Change:
D = $L/libcwp.a $L/libpar.a $L/libsu.a
LFLAGS= $(PRELFLAGS) -L$L -lsu -lpar -lcwp -lm $(POSTLFLAGS)
to:
D = $L/libcwp.a $L/libpar.a $L/libsu.a
B = .
OPTC = -g
LFLAGS= $(PRELFLAGS) -L$L -lsu -lpar -lcwp -lm $(POSTLFLAGS)
Change:

PROGS =

\
$B/bhedtopar
$B/dt1tosu
$B/segyclean
$B/segyhdrs
$B/segyread
...
...

\
\
\
\
\

to:
PROGS =

97

98

CHAPTER 10. HOW TO WRITE AN SU PROGRAM

$B/yourprogram

where the source code of your program is called yourprogram.c and resides in this directory.
You should then be able to simply type make and yourprogram will be compiled.
As a test you can try copying one of the existing SU programs, from $CWPROOT/src/su/main into
your local working directory, modifying the Makefile accordingly and typing: make.
Indeed, because all new SU programs may be viewed as beginning as clones of existing SU programs
of a similar structure, this is perhaps the best way to begin any new coding venture.

10.2

A template SU program

Although variations are usually needed, a template for a typical SU program looks like the program
listing below (we excerpted lines from the program sumute to build this template). The numbers in
square brackets at the end of the lines in the listing are not part of the listingwe added them to
facilitate discussion of the template. The secret to efficient SU coding is finding an existing program
similar to the one you want to write. If you have trouble locating the right code or codes to clone, ask
usthis can be the toughest part of the job!
/* SUMUTE: $Revision: 1.20 $ ; $Date: 2002/08/22 20:19:54 $
#include "su.h"
#include "segy.h"

*/

[1]
[2]

/*********************** self documentation **********************/ [3]

char *sdoc[] = {
"
",
" SUMUTE - ......
",
"
",
" sumute <stdin >stdout
",
"
",
" Required parameters:
",
"
none
",
"
",
" Optional parameters:
",
"
...
",
"
",
" Trace header fields accessed: ns
",
" Trace header fields modified: none
",
"
",
NULL};
/**************** end self doc ***********************************/
/* Credits:
*
*
CWP: Jack Cohen, John Stockwell
*/

segy tr;
main(int argc, char **argv)
{

[4]

10.2. A TEMPLATE SU PROGRAM

int ns;
...

99

/* number of samples

*/

/* Initialize */
initargs(argc, argv);
requestdoc(1);
/* Get parameters */
if (!getparint("ntaper", &ntaper))

[5]

[6]
[7]

ntaper = 0;

[8]

/* Get info from first trace */

if (!gettr(&tr)) err("cant read first trace");
if (!tr.dt) err("dt header field must be set");

[9]
[10]

/* Loop over traces */

do {
int nt
= (int) tr.ns;

[11]
[12]

if (below == 0) {
[13]
nmute = NINT((t - tmin)/dt);
memset((void *) tr.data, (int) \0, nmute*FSIZE);
for (i = 0; i < ntaper; ++i)
tr.data[i+nmute] *= taper[i];
} else {
nmute = NINT((nt*dt - t)/dt);
memset((void *) (tr.data+nt-nmute),
(int) \0, nmute*FSIZE);
for (i = 0; i < ntaper; ++i)
tr.data[nt-nmute-1-i] *= taper[i];
}
puttr(&tr);
[14]
} while (gettr(&tr));
[15]
return EXIT_SUCCESS;

[16]

}
Discussion of numbered lines:
1. We maintain the internal versions of the codes with the UNIX utility RCS. This item shows the
string template for RCS.
2. The file su.h includes (directly or indirectly) all our locally defined macros and prototypes. The
file segy.h has the definitions for the trace header fields.
3. The starred lines delimit the self-doc informationinclude them exactly as you find them in the
codes since they are used by the automatic documentation shells. The style of the self-doc shown
is typical except that often additional usage information is shown at the bottom and, of course,
often there are more options. Look at some existing codes for ideas.
4. This is an external declaration of an SU (SEG-Y) trace buffer. It is external to avoid wasting stack
space.
5. We usually describe the global variables at the time of declaration. Examine codes related to
yours to increase consistency of nomenclature (there is no official SU naming standard).

100

CHAPTER 10. HOW TO WRITE AN SU PROGRAM

6. The initargs subroutine sets SUs command line passing facility (see page 75).
7. The requestdoc subroutine call specifies the circumstances under which self-doc will be echoed
to the user. The argument 1 applies to the typical program that uses only standard input (i.e.
<) to read an SU trace file. Use 0 for codes that create synthetic data (like suplane) and 2 for
codes that require two input files (we could say et cetera, but there are no existing SU mains
that require three or more input files).
8. This is typical code for reading parameters from the command line. Interpret it like this: If the
user did not specify a value, then use the default value. The subroutine must be type-specific,
here we are getting an integer parameter.
9. Read the first trace, exit if empty. The subroutine fgettr knows about the SU trace format.
Usually the trace file is read from standard input and then we use gettr which is a macro based
on fgettr defined in su.h. Note that this code implies that the first trace is read into the trace
buffer (here called tr), therefore we will have to process this trace before the next call to fgettr.
10. Weve read that first trace because, we need to get some trace parameters from the first trace
header. Usually these are items like the number of samples (tr.ns) and/or the sampling interval
(tr.dt) that, by the SEGY-Y standard, are the same for all traces.
11. Since the first trace has been (typically) read before the main processing loop starts, we use a
do-while that reads a new trace at the bottom of the loop.
12. We favor using local variables where permitted.
13. This is the seismic algorithmhere incomplete. Weve left in some of the actual sumute code
because it happens to contains lines that will be useful in the new code, well be writing below.
You may want to call a subroutine here to do the real work.
14. fputtr and puttr are the output analogs of fgettr and gettr.
15. The loop end. gettr returns a 0 when the trace file is exhausted and the processing then stops.
16. This is an ANSI-C macro conventionally used to indicate successful program termination.

10.3

Writing a new program: suvlength

A user asked about SU processing for variable length traces. At his institute, data are collected from
time of excitation to a variable termination time. The difficulty is that SU processing is based on the
SEG-Y standard which mandates that all traces in the data set be of the same length. Rather than
contemplating changing all of SU, it seems to us that the solution is to provide a program that converts
the variable length data to fixed length data by padding with zeroes where necessary at the end of the
traceslets name this new program suvlength. We can make the length of the output traces a user
parameter. If there is a reasonable choice, it makes sense to provide a default value for parameters.
Here, using the length of the first trace seems the best choice since that value can be ascertained before
the main processing loop starts.
So far, so good. But now our plan runs into a serious snag: the fundamental trace getting facility,
gettr, itself assumes fixed length traces (or perhaps we should say that gettr deliberately enforces the
fixed length trace standard). But, if you think about it, youll realize that gettr itself has to take special
measures with the first trace to figure out its length. All we have to do is make a new trace getting
routine that employs that first trace logic for every trace. Here, well suppress the details of writing the
fvgettr subroutine and turn to converting the template above into the new suvlength code:
/* SUVLENGTH: $Revision: 1.20 $ ; $Date: 2002/08/22 20:19:54 $
#include "su.h"

*/

10.3. WRITING A NEW PROGRAM: SUVLENGTH

101

#include "segy.h"
/*********************** self documentation **********************/
char *sdoc[] = {
"
",
" SUVLENGTH - Adjust variable length traces to common length
",
"
",
" suvlength <variable_length_traces >fixed_length_traces
",
"
",
" Required parameters:
",
"
none
",
"
",
" Optional parameters:
",
"
ns
output number of samples (default: 1st trace ns)",
NULL};
/**************** end self doc ***********************************/
/* Credits:
*
CWP: Jack Cohen, John Stockwell
*/
/* prototype */
int fvgettr(FILE *fp, segy *tp);
segy tr;
main(int argc, char **argv)
{
int ns;
/* number of samples on output traces

*/

/* Initialize */
initargs(argc, argv);
requestdoc(1);
/* Get parameters */
...
/* Get info from first trace */
...
...
return EXIT_SUCCESS;

[16]

}
/* fvgettr code goes here */
...
Now we run into a small difficulty. Our only parameter has a default value that is obtained only after
we read in the first trace. The obvious solution is to reverse the parameter getting and the trace getting
in the template. Thus we resume:

102

CHAPTER 10. HOW TO WRITE AN SU PROGRAM

/* Get info from first trace and set ns */
if (!fvgettr(stdin, &tr)) err("cant get first trace");
if (!getparint("ns", &ns))
ns = tr.ns;
/* Loop over the traces */
do {
int nt = tr.ns;

Now comes the actual seismic algorithmwhich is rather trivial in the present case: add zeroes to the
end of the input trace if the output length is specified greater than the input length. We could write
a simple loop to do the job, but the task is done most succinctly by using the ANSI-C routine memset.
However, we confess that unless weve used it recently, we usually forget how to use this routine. One
solution is to cd to the su/main directory and use grep to find other uses of memset. When we did this,
we found that sumute had usage closest to what we needed and that is why we started from a copy of
that code. Here is the complete main for suvlength:
/* SUVLENGTH: $Revision: 1.20 $ ; $Date: 2002/08/22 20:19:54 $

*/

#include "su.h"
#include "segy.h"
/*********************** self documentation **********************/
char *sdoc[] = {
"
",
" SUVLENGTH - Adjust variable length traces to common length
",
"
",
" suvlength <vdata >stdout
",
"
",
" Required parameters:
",
"
none
",
"
",
" Optional parameters:
",
"
ns
output number of samples (default: 1st trace ns)",
NULL};
/**************** end self doc ***********************************/
/* Credits:
*
CWP: Jack Cohen, John Stockwell
*
* Trace header fields accessed: ns
* Trace header fields modified: ns
*/
/* prototype */
int fvgettr(FILE *fp, segy *tp);
segy tr;
main(int argc, char **argv)
{
int ns;

/* samples on output traces

*/

10.3. WRITING A NEW PROGRAM: SUVLENGTH

103

/* Initialize */
initargs(argc, argv);
requestdoc(1);

/* Get info from first trace */

if (!fvgettr(stdin, &tr)) err("cant get first trace");
if (!getparint("ns", &ns))
ns = tr.ns;

/* Loop over the traces */

do {
int nt = tr.ns;
if (nt < ns) /* pad with zeros */
memset((void *)(tr.data + nt), \0, (ns-nt)*FSIZE);
tr.ns = ns;
puttr(&tr);
} while (fvgettr(stdin, &tr));
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

#include "header.h"
/* fvgettr - get a segy trace from a file by file pointer (nt can vary)
*
* Returns:
*
int: number of bytes read on current trace (0 after last trace)
*
* Synopsis:
*
int fvgettr(FILE *fp, segy *tp)
*
* Credits:
*
Cloned from .../su/lib/fgettr.c
*/
int fvgettr(FILE *fp, segy *tp)
...
Remark: In the actual SU, the subroutine fvgettr has been extracted as a library function and we also
made a convenience macro vgettr for the case of standard input. But these are secondary considerations
that dont arise for most applications.
For any new SU code, one should provide an example shell program to show how the new code is to
be used. Here is such a program for X Windows graphics:
#! /bin/sh
# Trivial test of suvlength with X Windows graphics
WIDTH=700
HEIGHT=900
WIDTHOFF=50

104

CHAPTER 10. HOW TO WRITE AN SU PROGRAM

HEIGHTOFF=20
>tempdata
>vdata
suplane >tempdata # default is 32 traces with 64 samples per trace
suplane nt=72 >>tempdata
suvlength <tempdata ns=84 |
sushw key=tracl a=1 b=1 >vdata
# Plot the data
suxwigb <vdata \
perc=99 title="suvlength test"\
label1="Time (sec)" label2="Traces" \
wbox=$WIDTH hbox=$HEIGHT xbox=$WIDTHOFF ybox=$HEIGHTOFF &
# Remove #comment sign on next line to test the header
#sugethw <vdata tracl ns | more

Appendix A

Obtaining and Installing SU

The SU package contains seismic processing programs along with libraries of scientific routines, graphics
routines and routines supporting the SU coding conventions. The package is available by anonymous
ftp at the site ftp.cwp.mines.edu (138.67.12.4). The directory path is pub/cwpcodes. The package may
also be obtained on the World Wide Web at http://www.cwp.mines.edu/cwpcodes. Take the files:
1. README BEFORE UNTARRING
2. untar me first.xx.tar.Z
3. cwp.su.all.xx.tar.Z
Here the xx denotes the number of the current release. An incremental update is also available for
updating the previous release yy to the current release xx. Take the files:
1. README BEFORE UNTARRING
2. README UPDATE
3. untar me first.xx.tar.Z
4. update.yy.to.xx.tar.Z
5. update.list
If you find that ftp times out during the transmission of the files, the package is available in smaller
pieces in the subdirectory outside usa.
For readers who are not familiar with anonymous ftp, an annotated transaction listing follows in section A.1.

A.1

Obtaining files by anonymous ftp

Type:
% ftp 138.67.12.4
username: anonymous
password: yourname@your.machine.name

ftp>

138.67.12.4 is our ftp site

your username is anonymous
type anything here

this is the prompt you see

when you are in ftp
You are now logged in via ftp to the CWP anonymous ftp site. You may type:

105

106

APPENDIX A. OBTAINING AND INSTALLING SU

ftp> ls
ftp> cd dirname
ftp> binary

ftp> get filename

ftp> mget pattern*
For example:

ftp> mget *.tar.Z

ftp> bye

A.2

to see the contents of the directories

to change directories to dirname
to set binary mode for transferring files
You must do this before you try to transfer any
binary file. This includes all files with the form
some name.tar.Z extension.
to transfer filename from our site to your machine
to transfer all files with names of the pattern*

will transfer all files with the form of name.tar.Z

to your machine. You will be asked whether you
really want each file of this name pattern transferred,
before ftp actually does it.
to exit from ftp

Requirements for installing the package

The only requirements for installing the package are:

1. A machine running the UNIX operating system.
2. An ANSI C compiler.
3. A version of make which supports include files
4. 16-60 megabytes (depending on system) of disk space for the source and compiled binary. If space
is an issue, then the compiled binaries may be stripped by cding to $CWPROOT/bin and
typing strip *.
The package has been successfully installed on:
IBM RS6000
SUN SPARC STATIONS
HP 9000 series machines
HP Apollo
NeXT
Convex
DEC
Silicon Graphics
PCs running LINUX, PRIME TIME, SCO, FREE BSD, ESIX, and NeXTSTEP 486
There are README files in the distribution with special notes about some of these platforms. We
depend on the SU user community to alert us to installation problems, so if you run into difficulties,
please let us know.
The distribution contains a series of files that detail the installation process. Read them in the
following order:
LEGAL_STATEMENT --- license, legal statement
README_BEFORE_UNTARRING --- initial information
README_FIRST --- general information
README_TO_INSTALL --- installation instructions
Portability/README_*
--- portability information for various platforms
README_GETTING_STARTED --- how to begin using the codes

A.3. A QUICK TEST

107

10

20

30

0.05

0.10

0.15

0.20

0.25

Figure A.1: Output of the suplane pipeline.

Many of these files are contained within untar me first.xx.tar.Z.

A.3

A quick test

Once you have completed the installation, here is a quick test you can make to see if you have a
functioning seismic system. For an X-windows machine, the pipeline
suplane | suxwigb &
should produce the graphic shown in Figure A.1. If you have a PostScript printer, then you should get
a hard copy version with the pipeline
suplane | supswigb | lpr
If you have Display PostScript, or a PostScript previewer, then to get a screen display, replace the lpr
command in the pipeline by the command that opens a PostScript file, for example:
suplane | supswigb | ghostview Another set of test pipelines are
susynlv | supsimage | lpr
susynlv | supswigb | ghostview -

108

APPENDIX A. OBTAINING AND INSTALLING SU

Figure A.2: Output of the susynlv pipeline.

Appendix B

Help Facililties
B.1

Suhelp

The full text of the output from:

% suhelp
CWP PROGRAMS: (no self-documentation)
ctrlstrip
downfort
fcat
isatty

maxints

pause

PAR PROGRAMS: (programs with self-documentation)

a2b
grm
rayt2d
smoothint2
unisam2
xy2z
b2a
h2b
recast
subset
vel2stiff
z2xyz
dzdv
kaperture
regrid3
swapbytes
velconv
farith
makevel
resamp
transp
velpert
ftnstrip
mkparfile
smooth2
unif2
vtlvz
ftnunstrip
prplot
smooth3d
unisam
wkbj

press return key to continue

SU PROGRAMS: (self-documented programs for SU data )
SU data is "SEGY" data run through "segyclean"
bhedtopar
sudmofkcw
sukdmig3d
suop
sustkvel
dt1tosu
sudmotivz
sukdsyn2d
suop2
sustolt
segdread
sudmotx
sukfilter
supack1
sustrip
segyclean
sudmovz
sukfrac
supack2
suswapbytes
segyhdrs
suea2df
sukill
supaste
susyncz
segyread
suedit
sulog
supef
susynlv
segywrite
sufdmod2
sumax
supgc
susynlvcw
setbhed
sufft
sumean
supickamp
susynlvfti
su3dchart
sufilter
sumedian
suplane
susynvxz
suabshw
suflip
sumigfd
suput
susynvxzcs
suacor
sufrac
sumigffd
suquantile
sutab
suaddhead
sufxdecon
sumiggbzo
suradon
sutaper
suaddnoise
sugabor
sumigprefd
suramp
sutaup
suamp
sugain
sumigpreffd
surange
sutsq
suascii
sugazmig
sumigprepspi
surecip
suttoz
suattributes
suget
sumigpresp
sureduce
sutvband

109

upfort

110

APPENDIX B. HELP FACILILTIES

suazimuth
sugethw
sumigps
surelan
suunpack1
subfilt
suharlan
sumigpspi
suresamp
suunpack2
suchart
suhilb
sumigpsti
suresstat
suvcat
suchw
suifft
sumigsplit
sushape
suvelan
sucommand
suilog
sumigtk
sushift
suvibro
suconv
suimp2d
sumigtopo2d
sushw
suvlength
sudatumfd
suimp3d
sumix
susort
suweight
sudatumk2dr
suinterp
sumute
suspecfk
suwind
sudatumk2ds
suintvel
sunmo
suspecfx
suxcor
sudipfilt
suinvvxzco
sunormalize
suspeck1k2
suxedit
sudivcor
suinvzco3d
sunull
suspike
suzero
sudivstack
suk1k2filter
suocext
sustack
sudmofk
sukdmig2d
suoldtonew
sustatic

press return key to continue

Delaunay Triangulation Materials:
gbbeam
normray
tri2uni
trimodel

triray

triseis

uni2tri

Tetrahedra Materials:
sutetraray
tetramod
X-windows GRAPHICS for Delaunay Triangulation:
sxplot
press return key to continue
Straight X-windows GRAPHICS:
lcmap
scmap
xepsb
lprop
xcontour
xepsp

ximage
xpicker

xpsp
xwigb

X-Toolkit based X-windows GRAPHICS:

xgraph
xmovie
xrects
Motif-based X-windows GRAPHICS:
fftlab
X-windows GRAPHICS: for SU ("segyclean"-ed SEGY)
suxcontour
suximage
suxmovie
suxwigb
suxgraph
suxmax
suxpicker
PostScript GRAPHICS:
psbbox
pscube
pscontour
psepsi

psgraph
psimage

pslabel
psmanager

data sets

psmerge
psmovie

pswigb
pswigp

PostScript GRAPHICS: for SU ("segyclean"-ed SEGY) data sets

supscontour
supsgraph
supsmax
supswigb
supscube
supsimage
supsmovie
supswigp
press return key to continue

B.2. SUNAME

111

Wavelet Packet Compression:

wpc1comp2
wpc1uncomp2
Wavelet Packet Compression:
wpccompress
wpcuncompress
2D Discrete Cosine Transform Compression:
dctcomp
dctuncomp
entropy
wptcomp

wptuncomp

wtcomp

wtuncomp

press return key to continue

CWP SHELLS SCRIPTS:
Grep
cwpfind
argv
dirtree
copyright
filetype
cpall
newcase

overwrite
precedence
replace
this_year

PAR SHELLS SCRIPTS:

gendocs
updatedoc

updatedocall

time_now
weekday
todays_date
why
usernames
zap
varlist

updatehead

POSTSCRIPT RELATED SHELLS SCRIPTS:

merge2
merge4
SU SHELLS SCRIPTS:
lookpar
rmaxdiff
maxdiff
suagc
recip
suband

sudiff
sudoc
suenv

sufind
sufind2
sugendocs

suhelp
sukeyword
suname

unglitch

press return key to continue

Use: "suname" to list the name and a brief description of all
of the CWP codes.
Use "sufind" to find programs by keyword/name fragment.
Use: "gendocs" to compile a LaTeX document listing all self-docs.
Use: "sukeyword" to find the SEGY header field keyword definitions.
Type: "program_name <CR>" to view its self documentation
Note: not all programs listed here have the self-documentation feature
Type: "sudoc program_name" to list information for these programs.
For answers to Frequently Asked Questions, see the contents of:
/usr/local/cwp/src/faq

B.2

Suname

The full text of the output from:

112

APPENDIX B. HELP FACILILTIES

% suname
----- CWP Free Programs ----CWPROOT=/usr/local/cwp
Mains:
In CWPROOT/src/cwp/main:
* CTRLSTRIP - Strip non-graphic characters
* DOWNFORT - change Fortran programs to lower case, preserving strings
* FCAT - fast cat with 1 read per file
* ISATTY - pass on return from isatty(2)
* MAXINTS - Compute maximum and minimum sizes for integer types
* PAUSE - prompt and wait for user signal to continue
* T - time and date for non-military types
* UPFORT - change Fortran programs to upper case, preserving strings
In CWPROOT/src/par/main:
A2B - convert ascii floats to binary
B2A - convert binary floats to ascii
DZDV - determine depth derivative with respect to the velocity ",
FARITH - File ARITHmetic -- perform simple arithmetic with binary files
FTNSTRIP - convert a file of binary data plus record delimiters created
FTNUNSTRIP - convert C binary floats to Fortran style floats
GRM - Generalized Reciprocal refraction analysis for a single layer
H2B - convert 8 bit hexidecimal floats to binary
KAPERTURE - generate the k domain of a line scatterer for a seismic array
MAKEVEL - MAKE a VELocity function v(x,y,z)
MKPARFILE - convert ascii to par file format
PRPLOT - PRinter PLOT of 1-D arrays f(x1) from a 2-D function f(x1,x2)
RAYT2D - traveltime Tables calculated by 2D paraxial RAY tracing
RECAST - RECAST data type (convert from one data type to another)
REGRID3 - REwrite a [ni3][ni2][ni1] GRID to a [no3][no2][no1] 3-D grid
RESAMP - RESAMPle the 1st dimension of a 2-dimensional function f(x1,x2)
SMOOTH2 --- SMOOTH a uniformly sampled 2d array of data, within a userSMOOTH3D - 3D grid velocity SMOOTHing by the damped least squares
SMOOTHINT2 --- SMOOTH non-uniformly sampled INTerfaces, via the damped
SUBSET - select a SUBSET of the samples from a 3-dimensional file
SWAPBYTES - SWAP the BYTES of various data types
TRANSP - TRANSPose an n1 by n2 element matrix
UNIF2 - generate a 2-D UNIFormly sampled velocity profile from a layered
UNISAM - UNIformly SAMple a function y(x) specified as x,y pairs
UNISAM2 - UNIformly SAMple a 2-D function f(x1,x2)
VEL2STIFF - Transforms VELocities, densities, and Thomsen parameters
VELCONV - VELocity CONVersion
VELPERT - estimate velocity parameter perturbation from covariance
VTLVZ -- Velocity as function of Time for Linear V(Z);
WKBJ - Compute WKBJ ray theoretic parameters, via finite differencing
XY2Z - converts (X,Y)-pairs to spike Z values on a uniform grid
Z2XYZ - convert binary floats representing Z-values to ascii
In CWPROOT/src/psplot/main:

B.2. SUNAME
PSBBOX - change BoundingBOX of existing PostScript file
PSCONTOUR - PostScript CONTOURing of a two-dimensional function f(x1,x2)
PSCUBE - PostScript image plot of a data CUBE
PSEPSI - add an EPSI formatted preview bitmap to an EPS file
PSGRAPH - PostScript GRAPHer
PSIMAGE - PostScript IMAGE plot of a uniformly-sampled function f(x1,x2)
PSLABEL - output PostScript file consisting of a single TEXT string
PSMANAGER - printer MANAGER for HP 4MV and HP 5Si Mx Laserjet
PSMERGE - MERGE PostScript files
PSMOVIE - PostScript MOVIE plot of a uniformly-sampled function f(x1,x2,x3)
PSWIGB - PostScript WIGgle-trace plot of f(x1,x2) via Bitmap
PSWIGP - PostScript WIGgle-trace plot of f(x1,x2) via Polygons
In CWPROOT/src/xplot/main:
* LCMAP - List Color Map of root window of default screen
* LPROP - List PROPerties of root window of default screen of display
* SCMAP - set default standard color map (RGB_DEFAULT_MAP)
XCONTOUR - X CONTOUR plot of f(x1,x2) via vector plot call
* XESPB - X windows display of Encapsulated PostScript as a single Bitmap
* XEPSP - X windows display of Encapsulated PostScript
XIMAGE - X IMAGE plot of a uniformly-sampled function f(x1,x2)
XIMAGE - X IMAGE plot of a uniformly-sampled function f(x1,x2)
XPICKER - X wiggle-trace plot of f(x1,x2) via Bitmap with PICKing
* XPSP - Display conforming PostScript in an X-window
XWIGB - X WIGgle-trace plot of f(x1,x2) via Bitmap
In CWPROOT/src/Xtcwp/main:
XGRAPH - X GRAPHer
XMOVIE - image one or more frames of a uniformly sampled function f(x1,x2)
XRECTS - plot rectangles on a two-dimensional grid
In CWPROOT/src/Xmcwp/main:
* FFTLAB - Motif-X based graphical 1D Fourier Transform
In CWPROOT/src/su/graphics/psplot:
SUPSCONTOUR - PostScript CONTOUR plot of a segy data set
SUPSCUBE - PostScript CUBE plot of a segy data set
SUPSGRAPH - PostScript GRAPH plot of a segy data set
SUPSIMAGE - PostScript IMAGE plot of a segy data set
SUPSMAX - PostScript of the MAX, min, or absolute max value on each trace
SUPSMOVIE - PostScript MOVIE plot of a segy data set
SUPSWIGB - PostScript Bit-mapped WIGgle plot of a segy data set
SUPSWIGP - PostScript Polygon-filled WIGgle plot of a segy data set
In CWPROOT/src/su/main:
BHEDTOPAR - convert a Binary tape HEaDer file to PAR file format
DT1TOSU - Convert ground-penetrating radar data in the Sensors & Software
SEGDREAD - read an SEG-D tape
SEGYCLEAN - zero out unassigned portion of header
SEGYHDRS - make SEG-Y ascii and binary headers for segywrite
SEGYREAD - read an SEG-Y tape
SEGYWRITE - write an SEG-Y tape

113

114

APPENDIX B. HELP FACILILTIES

SETBHED - SET the fields in a SEGY Binary tape HEaDer file, as would be
SU3DCHART - plot x-midpoints vs. y-midpoints for 3-D data
SUABSHW - replace header key word by its absolute value
SUACOR - auto-correlation
SUADDHEAD - put headers on bare traces and set the tracl and ns fields
SUADDNOISE - add noise to traces
SUAMP - output amp, phase, real or imag trace from
SUASCII - print non zero header values and data
SUATTRIBUTES - trace ATTRIBUTES instantanteous amplitude, phase,
SUAZIMUTH - compute trace AZIMUTH given the sx,sy,gx,gy header fields
SUBFILT - apply Butterworth bandpass filter
SUCHART - prepare data for x vs. y plot
SUCHW - Change Header Word using one or two header word fields
SUCOMMAND - pipe traces having the same key header word to command
SUCONV - convolution with user-supplied filter
SUDATUMFD - 2D zero-offset Finite Difference acoustic wave-equation
SUDATUMK2DR - Kirchhoff datuming of receivers for 2D prestack data
SUDATUMK2DS - Kirchhoff datuming of sources for 2D prestack data
SUDIPFILT - DIP--or better--SLOPE Filter in f-k domain
SUDIVCOR - Divergence (spreading) correction
SUDIVSTACK - Diversity Stacking using either average power or peak
SUDMOFK - DMO via F-K domain (log-stretch) method for common-offset gathers
SUDMOFKCW - converted-wave DMO via F-K domain (log-stretch) method for
SUDMOTIVZ - DMO for Transeversely Isotropic V(Z) media for common-offset
SUDMOTX - DMO via T-X domain (Kirchhoff) method for common-offset gathers
SUDMOVZ - DMO for V(Z) media for common-offset gathers
SUEA2DF - SU version of (an)elastic anisotropic 2D finite difference
SUEDIT - examine segy diskfiles and edit headers
SUFDMOD2 - Finite-Difference MODeling (2nd order) for acoustic wave equation
SUFFT - fft real time traces to complex frequency traces
SUFILTER - applies a zero-phase, sine-squared tapered filter
SUFLIP - flip a data set in various ways
SUFRAC -- take general (fractional) time derivative or integral of
SUFXDECON - random noise attenuation by FX-DECONvolution
SUGABOR - Outputs a time-frequency representation of seismic data via
SUGAIN - apply various types of gain to display traces
SUGAZMIG - SU version of Jeno GAZDAGs phase-shift migration
SUGET - Connect SU program to file descriptor for input stream.
SUGETHW - sugethw writes the values of the selected key words
SUHARLAN - signal-noise separation by the invertible linear
SUHILB - Hilbert transform
SUIFFT - fft complex frequency traces to real time traces
SUILOG -- time axis inverse log-stretch of seismic traces
SUIMP2D - generate shot records for a line scatterer
SUIMP3D - generate inplane shot records for a point
SUINTERP - interpolate traces using automatic event picking
SUINTVEL - convert stacking velocity model to interval velocity model
SUINVXZCO - Seismic INVersion of Common Offset data for a smooth
SUINVZCO3D - Seismic INVersion of Common Offset data with V(Z) velocity
SUK1K2FILTER - symmetric box-like K-domain filter defined by the
SUKDMIG2D - Kirchhoff Depth Migration of 2D poststack/prestack data
SUKDMIG3D - Kirchhoff Depth Migration of 3D poststack/prestack data

B.2. SUNAME
SUKDSYN2D - Kirchhoff Depth SYNthesis of 2D seismic data from a
SUKFILTER - radially symmetric K-domain, sin^2-tapered, polygonal
SUKFRAC - apply FRACtional powers of i|k| to data, with phase shift
SUKILL - zero out traces
SULOG -- time axis log-stretch of seismic traces
SUMAX - get trace by trace local/global maxima, minima, or absolute maximum
SUMEAN - get the mean values of data traces ",
SUMEDIAN - MEDIAN filter about a user-defined polygonal curve with
SUMIGFD - 45-90 degree Finite difference migration for zero-offset data.
SUMIGFFD - Fourier finite difference migration for
SUMIGGBZO - MIGration via Gaussian Beams of Zero-Offset SU data
SUMIGPREFD --- The 2-D prestack common-shot 45-90 degree
SUMIGPREFFD - The 2-D prestack common-shot Fourier finite-difference
SUMIGPREPSPI --- The 2-D PREstack commom-shot Phase-Shift-Plus
SUMIGPRESP - The 2-D prestack common-shot split-step Fourier ",
SUMIGPS - MIGration by Phase Shift with turning rays
SUMIGPSPI - Gazdags phase-shift plus interpolation migration
SUMIGPSTI - MIGration by Phase Shift for TI media with turning rays
SUMIGSPLIT - Split-step depth migration for zero-offset data.
SUMIGTK - MIGration via T-K domain method for common-midpoint stacked data
SUMIGTOPO2D - Kirchhoff Depth Migration of 2D postack/prestack data
SUMIX - compute weighted moving average (trace MIX) on a panel
SUMUTE - mute above (or below) a user-defined polygonal curve with ",
NMO - NMO for an arbitrary velocity function of time and CDP
SUNORMALIZE - Trace balancing by rms, max, or median ",
SUNULL - create null (all zeroes) traces
SUOCEXT - smaller offset extrapolation via Offset Continuation
SUOLDTONEW - convert existing su data to xdr format
SUOP - do unary arithmetic operation on segys
SUOP2 - do a binary operation on two data sets
SUPACK1 - pack segy trace data into chars
SUPACK2 - pack segy trace data into 2 byte shorts
SUPASTE - paste existing SEGY headers on existing data
SUPEF - Wiener predictive error filtering
SUPGC
Programmed Gain Control--apply agc like function
SUPICKAMP - pick amplitudes within user defined and resampled window
SUPLANE - create common offset data file with up to 3 planes
SUPUT - Connect SU program to file descriptor for output stream.
SUQUANTILE - display some quantiles or ranks of a data set
SURADON - compute forward or reverse Radon transform or remove multiples
SURAMP - Linearly taper the start and/or end of traces to zero.
SURANGE - get max and min values for non-zero header entries
SURECIP - sum opposing offsets in prepared data (see below)
SUREDUCE - convert traces to display in reduced time ",
SURELAN - compute residual-moveout semblance for cdp gathers based
SURESAMP - Resample in time
SURESSTAT - Surface consistent source and receiver statics calculation
SUSHAPE - Wiener shaping filter
SUSHIFT - shifted/windowed traces in time
SUSHW - Set one or more Header Words using trace number, mod and
SUSORT - sort on any segy header keywords
SUSPECFK - F-K Fourier SPECtrum of data set

115

116

APPENDIX B. HELP FACILILTIES

SUSPECFX - Fourier SPECtrum (T -> F) of traces

SUSPECK1K2 - 2D (K1,K2) Fourier SPECtrum of (x1,x2) data set
SUSPIKE - make a small spike data set
SUSTACK - stack adjacent traces having the same key header word
SUSTATIC - Elevation static corrections, apply corrections from
SUSTKVEL - convert constant dip layer interval velocity model to the
SUSTOLT - Stolt migration for stacked data or common-offset gathers
SUSTRIP - remove the SEGY headers from the traces
SUSWAPBYTES - SWAP the BYTES in SU data to convert data from big endian
SUSYNCZ - SYNthetic seismograms for piecewise constant V(Z) function
SUSYNLV - SYNthetic seismograms for Linear Velocity function
SUSYNLVCW - SYNthetic seismograms for Linear Velocity function
SUSYNLVFTI - SYNthetic seismograms for Linear Velocity function in a factored
SUSYNVXZ - SYNthetic seismograms of common offset V(X,Z) media via
SUSYNVXZCS - SYNthetic seismograms of common shot in V(X,Z) media via
SUTAB - print non zero header values and data for non-graphic terminals
SUTAPER - Taper the edge traces of a data panel to zero.
SUTAUP - forwared and inverse T-X and F-K global slant stacks
SUTSQ -- time axis time-squared stretch of seismic traces
SUTTOZ - resample from time to depth
SUTVBAND - time-variant bandpass filter (sine-squared taper)
SUUNPACK1 - unpack segy trace data from chars to floats
SUUNPACK2 - unpack segy trace data from shorts to floats
SUVCAT - append one data set to another, with or without an ",
SUVELAN - compute stacking velocity semblance for cdp gathers
SUVIBRO - Generates a Vibroseis sweep (linear, linear-segment,
SUVLENGTH - Adjust variable length traces to common length
SUWEIGHT - weight traces by header parameter, such as offset
SUWIND - window traces by key word
SUXCOR - correlation with user-supplied filter
SUXEDIT - examine segy diskfiles and edit headers
SUZERO -- zero-out data within a time window
In CWPROOT/src/su/graphics/psplot:
SUPSCONTOUR - PostScript CONTOUR plot of a segy data set
SUPSCUBE - PostScript CUBE plot of a segy data set
SUPSGRAPH - PostScript GRAPH plot of a segy data set
SUPSIMAGE - PostScript IMAGE plot of a segy data set
SUPSMAX - PostScript of the MAX, min, or absolute max value on each trace
SUPSMOVIE - PostScript MOVIE plot of a segy data set
SUPSWIGB - PostScript Bit-mapped WIGgle plot of a segy data set
SUPSWIGP - PostScript Polygon-filled WIGgle plot of a segy data set
In CWPROOT/src/su/graphics/xplot:
SUXCONTOUR - X CONTOUR plot of Seismic UNIX tracefile via vector plot call
SUXGRAPH - X-windows GRAPH plot of a segy data set
SUXIMAGE - X-windows IMAGE plot of a segy data set
SUXMAX - X-windows graph of the MAX, min, or absolute max value on
SUXMOVIE - X MOVIE plot of a segy data set
SUXPICKER - X-windows WIGgle plot PICKER of a segy data set
SUXWIGB - X-windows Bit-mapped WIGgle plot of a segy data set

B.2. SUNAME
In CWPROOT/src/tri/main:
GBBEAM - Gaussian beam synthetic seismograms for a sloth model
NORMRAY - dynamic ray tracing for normal incidence rays in a sloth model
TRI2UNI - convert a TRIangulated model to UNIformly sampled model
TRIMODEL - make a triangulated sloth (1/velocity^2) model
TRIRAY - dynamic RAY tracing for a TRIangulated sloth model
TRISEIS - Gaussian beam synthetic seismograms for a sloth model
UNI2TRI - convert UNIformly sampled model to a TRIangulated model
In CWPROOT/src/xtri:
SXPLOT - X Window plot a triangulated sloth function s(x1,x2)
In CWPROOT/src/tri/graphics/psplot:
SPSPLOT - plot a triangulated sloth function s(x,z) via PostScript
In CWPROOT/src/comp/dct/main:
DCTCOMP - Compression by Discrete Cosine Transform
DCTUNCOMP - Discrete Cosine Transform Uncompression
ENTROPY - compute the ENTROPY of a signal
WPTCOMP - Compression by Wavelet Packet Compression
WPTUNCOMP - Uncompress WPT compressed data
WTCOMP - Compression by Wavelet Transform
WTUNCOMP - UNCOMPression of WT compressed data
In CWPROOT/src/comp/dwpt/1d/main:
WPC1COMP2 --- COMPress a 2D seismic section trace-by-trace using
WPC1UNCOMP2 --- UNCOMPRESS a 2D seismic section, which has been
In CWPROOT/src/comp/dwpt/2d/main:
WPCCOMPRESS --- COMPRESS a 2D section using Wavelet Packets
WPCUNCOMPRESS --- UNCOMPRESS a 2D section
Shells:
In CWPROOT/src/cwp/shell:
# Grep - recursively call egrep in pwd
# ARGV - give examples of dereferencing char **argv
# COPYRIGHT - insert CSM COPYRIGHT lines at top of files in working directory
# CPALL , RCPALL - for local and remote directory tree/file transfer
# CWPFIND - look for files with patterns in CWPROOT/src/cwp/lib
# DIRTREE - show DIRectory TREE
# FILETYPE - list all files of given type
# NEWCASE - Changes the case of all the filenames in a directory, dir
# OVERWRITE - copy stdin to stdout after EOF
# PRECEDENCE - give table of C precedences from Kernighan and Ritchie
# REPLACE - REPLACE string1 with string2 in files
# THIS_YEAR - print the current year
# TIME_NOW - prints time in ZULU format with no spaces
# TODAYS_DATE - prints todays date in ZULU format with no spaces
# USERNAMES - get list of all login names
# VARLIST - list variables used in a Fortran program
# WEEKDAY - prints todays WEEKDAY designation

117

118

APPENDIX B. HELP FACILILTIES

# ZAP - kill processes by name

In CWPROOT/src/par/shell:
# GENDOCS - generate complete list of selfdocs in latex form
# UPDATEDOC - put self-docs in ../doc/Stripped and ../doc/Headers
# UPDATEDOCALL - put self-docs in ../doc/Stripped
# UPDATEHEAD - update ../doc/Headers/Headers.all
In CWPROOT/src/psplot/shell:
# MERGE2 - put 2 standard size PostScript figures on one page
# MERGE4 - put 4 standard size PostScript plots on one page
In CWPROOT/src/su/shell:
# LOOKPAR - show getpar lines in SU code with defines evaluated
# MAXDIFF - find absolute maximum difference in two segy data sets
# RECIP - sum opposing (reciprocal) offsets in cdp sorted data
# RMAXDIFF - find percentage maximum difference in two segy data sets
# SUAGC - perform agc on SU data
# SUBAND - Trapezoid-like Sin squared tapered Bandpass filter via SUFILTER
# SUDIFF, SUSUM, SUPROD, SUQUO, SUPTDIFF, SUPTSUM,
# SUDOC - get DOC listing for code
# SUENV - Instantaneous amplitude, frequency, and phase via: SUATTRIBUTES
# SUFIND - get info from self-docs
# SUFIND - get info from self-docs
# SUGENDOCS - generate complete list of selfdocs in latex form
# SUHELP - list the CWP/SU programs and shells
# SUKEYWORD -- guide to SU keywords in segy.h
# SUNAME - get name line from self-docs
# UNGLITCH - zonk outliers in data
Libs:
In CWPROOT/src/cwp/lib:
ABEL - Functions to compute the discrete ABEL transform:
AIRY - Approximate the Airy functions Ai(x), Bi(x) and their respective
ALLOC - Allocate and free multi-dimensional arrays
ANTIALIAS - Butterworth anti-aliasing filter
AXB - Functions to solve a linear system of equations Ax=b by LU
BIGMATRIX - Functions to manipulate 2-dimensional matrices that are too big
BUTTERWORTH - Functions to design and apply Butterworth filters:
COMPLEX - Functions to manipulate complex numbers
COMPLEXD - Functions to manipulate double-precision complex numbers
COMPLEXF - Subroutines to perform operations on complex numbers.
CONVOLUTION - Compute z = x convolved with y
CUBICSPLINE - Functions to compute CUBIC SPLINE interpolation coefficients
DBLAS - Double precision Basic Linear Algebra subroutines
DGE - Double precision Gaussian Elimination matrix subroutines adapted
PFAFFT - Functions to perform Prime Factor (PFA) FFTs, in place
FRANNOR - functions to generate a pseudo-random float normally distributed
FRANUNI - Functions to generate a pseudo-random float uniformly distributed
HANKEL - Functions to compute discrete Hankel transforms
HILBERT - Compute Hilbert transform y of x

B.2. SUNAME
HOLBERG1D - Compute coefficients of Holbergs 1st derivative filter
IBMFLT_ - Convert IBM tape format to floats and back
INTCUB - evaluate y(x), y(x), y(x), ... via piecewise cubic interpolation
INTL2B - bilinear interpolation of a 2-D array of bytes
INTLIN - evaluate y(x) via linear interpolation of y(x[0]), y(x[1]), ...
INTSINC8 - Functions to interpolate uniformly-sampled data via 8-coeff. sinc
INTTABLE8 - Interpolation of a uniformly-sampled complex function y(x)
MKDIFF - Make an n-th order DIFFerentiator via Taylors series method.
MKHDIFF - Compute filter approximating the bandlimited HalF-DIFFerentiator.
MKSINC - Compute least-squares optimal sinc interpolation coefficients.
MNEWT - Solve non-linear system of equations f(x) = 0 via Newtons method
PFAFFT - Functions to perform Prime Factor (PFA) FFTs, in place
POLAR - Functions to map data in rectangular coordinates to polar and vise versa
PRINTERPLOT - Functions to make a printer plot of a 1-dimensional array
QUEST - Functions to ESTimate Quantiles:
RESSINC8 - Functions to resample uniformly-sampled data via 8-coefficient sinc
RFWTVA - Rasterize a Float array as Wiggle-Trace-Variable-Area.
RFWTVAINT - Rasterize a Float array as Wiggle-Trace-Variable-Area, with
SBLAS - Single precision Basic Linear Algebra Subroutines
SCAXIS - compute a readable scale for use in plotting axes
SGA - Single precision general matrix functions adapted from LINPACK FORTRAN:
SHFS8R - Shift a uniformly-sampled real-valued function y(x) via
SINC - Return SINC(x) for as floats or as doubles
SORT - Functions to sort arrays of data or arrays of indices
SQR - Single precision QR decomposition functions adapted from LINPACK FORTRAN:
STOEP - Functions to solve a symmetric Toeplitz linear system of equations
STRSTUFF -- STRing manuplation subs
SWAPBYTE - Functions to SWAP the BYTE order of binary data
TEMPORARY_FILENAME - Creates a file name in a user-specified directory.
TRIDIAGONAL - Functions to solve tridiagonal systems of equations Tu=r for u.
VANDERMONDE - Functions to solve Vandermonde system of equations Vx=b
WAVEFORMS Subroutines to define some wavelets for modeling of seimic
XCOR - Compute z = x cross-correlated with y
XINDEX - determine index of x with respect to an array of x values
YCLIP - Clip a function y(x) defined by linear interpolation of the
YXTOXY - Compute a regularly-sampled, monotonically increasing function x(y)
ZASC - routine to translate ncharacters from ebcdic to ascii
ZEBC - routine to translate ncharacters from ascii to ebcdic
In CWPROOT/src/par/lib:
VND *VNDop(int mode, long lwmax, int ndim, long *N, long npanels,
ATOPKGE - convert ascii to arithmetic and with error checking
DOCPKGE - Function to implement the CWP self-documentation facility
EALLOC - Allocate and free multi-dimensional arrays with error reports.
ERRPKGE - routines for reporting errors
FILESTAT - Functions to determine and output the type of a file from file
GETPARS - Functions to GET PARameterS from the command line. Numeric
MODELING - Seismic Modeling Subroutines for SUSYNLV and clones
SMOOTH - Functions to compute smoothing of 1-D or 2-D input data
SUBCALLS - routines for system functions with error checking
SYSCALLS - routines for SYSTEM CALLs with error checking

119

120

APPENDIX B. HELP FACILILTIES

In CWPROOT/src/su/lib:
FGETTR - Routines to get an SU trace from a file
FPUTTR - Routines to put an SU trace to a file
HDRPKGE - routines to access the SEGY header via the hdr structure.
TABPLOT - TABPLOT selected sample points on selected trace
VALPKGE - routines to handle variables of type Value
In CWPROOT/src/psplot/lib:
BASIC - Basic C function interface to PostScript
PSAXESBOX - Functions to draw PostScript axes and estimate bounding box
PSAXESBOX3 - Functions draw an axes box via PostScript, estimate bounding box
PSCAXESBOX - Draw an axes box for cube via PostScript
PSCONTOUR - draw contour of a two-dimensional array via PostScript
PSDRAWCURVE - Functions to draw a curve from a set of points
PSLEGENDBOX - Functions to draw PostScript axes and estimate bounding box
PSWIGGLE - draw wiggle-trace with (optional) area-fill via PostScript
In CWPROOT/src/xplot/lib:
AXESBOX - Functions to draw axes in X-windows graphics
COLORMAP - Functions to manipulate X colormaps:
DRAWCURVE - Functions to draw a curve from a set of points
IMAGE - Function for making the image in an X-windows image plot
LEGENDBOX - draw a labeled axes box for a legend (i.e. colorscale)
RUBBERBOX - Function to draw a rubberband box in X-windows plots
WINDOW - Function to create a window in X-windows graphics
XCONTOUR - draw contour of a two-dimensional array via X vectorplot calls
In CWPROOT/src/Xtcwp/lib:
AXES - the Axes Widget
COLORMAP - Functions to manipulate X colormaps:
FX - Functions to support floating point coordinates in X
MISC - Miscellaneous X-Toolkit functions
RESCONV - general purpose resource type converters
RUBBERBOX - Function to draw a rubberband box in X-windows plots
In CWPROOT/src/Xmcwp/lib:
RADIOBUTTONS - convenience functions creating and using radio buttons
SAMPLES - Motif-based Graphics Functions
In CWPROOT/src/tri/lib:
CHECK - CHECK triangulated models
CIRCUM - define CIRCUMcircles for Delaunay triangulation
COLINEAR - determine if edges or vertecies are COLINEAR in triangulated
CREATE - create model, boundary edge triangles, edge face, edge vertex, add
DELETE - DELETE vertex, model, edge, or boundary edge from triangulated model
DTE - Distance to Edge
FIXEDGES - FIX or unFIX EDGES between verticies
INSIDE - Is a vertex or point inside a circum circle, etc. of a triangulated
NEAREST - NEAREST edge or vertex in triangulated model
PROJECT - project to edge in triangulated model
READWRITE - READ or WRITE a triangulated model

B.2. SUNAME
In CWPROOT/src/cwputils:
CPUSEC - return cpu time (UNIX user time) in seconds
CPUTIME - return cpu time (UNIX user time) in seconds using ANSI C built-ins
WALLSEC - Functions to time processes
WALLTIME - Function to show time a process takes to run
In CWPROOT/src/comp/dct/lib:
DCT1 - 1D Discreet Cosine Transform Routines
DCT2 - 2D Discrete Cosine Transform Routines
DCTALLOC - ALLOCate space for transform tables for 1D DCT
GETFILTER - GET wavelet FILTER type
LCT1 - functions used to perform the 1D Local Cosine Transform (LCT)
LPRED - Lateral Prediction of Several Plane Waves
WAVEPACK1 - 1D wavelet packet transform
WAVEPACK2 - 2D Wavelet PACKet transform
WAVEPACK1 - 1D wavelet packet transform
WAVETRANS2 - 2D wavelet transform by tensor-product of two 1D transforms
In CWPROOT/src/comp/dct/libutil:
BUFFALLOC - routines to ALLOCate/initialize and free BUFFers
HUFFMAN - Routines for in memory Huffman coding/decoding
PENCODING - Routines to en/decode the quantized integers for lossless
QUANT - QUANTization routines
RLE - routines for in memory silence en/decoding
In CWPROOT/src/comp/dwpt/1d/lib:
WBUFFALLOC - routines to allocate/initialize and free buffers in wavelet
WPC1 - routines for compress a single seismic trace using wavelet packets
WPC1CODING - routines for encoding the integer symbols in 1D WPC
wpc1Quant - quantize
WPC1TRANS - routines to perform a 1D wavelet packet transform
In CWPROOT/src/comp/dwpt/2d/lib:
WPC - routines for compress a 2D seismic section using wavelet packets
WPCBUFFAL - routines to allocate/initialize and free buffers
WPCCODING - Routines for in memory coding of the quantized coeffiecients
WPCENDEC - Wavelet Packet Coding, Encoding and Decoding routines
WPCHUFF -Routines for in memory Huffman coding/decoding
WPCPACK2 - routine to perform a 2D wavelet packet transform
WPCQUANT - quantization routines for WPC
WPCSILENCE - routines for in memory silence en/decoding
Shells:
Libs:
Shells:
Libs:
Shells:
Libs:
To search on a program name fragment, type:
"suname name_fragment <CR>"
For more information type: "program_name <CR>"

121

122

APPENDIX B. HELP FACILILTIES

Items labeled with an asterisk (*) are C programs that may

or may not have a self documentation feature.
Items labeled with a pound sign (#) are shell scripts that may,
or may not have a self documentation feature.
To find information about these codes type:

B.3

sudoc program_name

Suhelp.html

This is the text listing of Chris Liners SU Help page.

SeismicUn*x
Version 33 (5 April 1999)
An HTML Help Browser
* This is a help browser for the SeismicUn*x free software package
developed and maintained by the Center for Wave Phenomena at the
Colorado School of Mines. The SU project is directed at CWP by John
Stockwell.
* The author of this help facility is Dr. Christopher Liner (an alumnus
of CWP) who is a faculty member in the Department of Geosciences at The
University of Tulsa.
* Last updated January 16, 1998

o The arrangement below is by funtionality

o Clicking on a program name pulls up the selfdoc for that item
o Your web browsers Find capability is useful if you have a
fragment in mind (e.g. sort or nmo)
o While programs may logically apply to more than one catagory
below, each program appears only once
----------------------------------------------------------------------1. Functional Listing
1. Data Compression
2. Editing, Sorting and Manipulation
3. Filtering, Transforms and Attributes
4. Gain, NMO, Stack and Standard Processes
5. Graphics
6. Import/Export
7. Migration and Dip Moveout
8. Simulation and Model Building
9. Utilities
* Alphabetical name list

* 280 items

B.3. SUHELP.HTML

123

* List is for scanning only, it

does not pull up the selfdoc of
a selected item.

* For further info on an

interesting item use your
browsers find command, then
follow the link

-----------------------------------------------------------------------Data Compression
Discrete Cosine Transform

Packing

Wavelet Transform

* dctcomp

* dctuncomp

*
*
*
*
*
*

*
*
*
*
*
*

supack1
supack2
wpc1comp2
wpccompress
wptcomp
wtcomp

suunpack1
suunpack2
wpc1uncomp2
wpcuncompress
wptuncomp
wtuncomp

Go to top
Editing, Sorting and Manipulation
* suabshw
* suazimuth
Edit + tools

Sort

Manipulate

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

* suquantile
* surange
* sushw

subset
suchw
suedit
sugethw
sukill
susort
fcat
maxdiff
suaddnoise
sudiff
suflip
suinterp
sunull
suop
suop2

* sutab
* suwind
* suxedit
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

suramp
surecip, recip
suresamp, resamp
suswapbytes
sutaper
suvcat
suzero
swapbytes
transp

Go to top
Filtering, Transforms and Attributes
* suband
One-Dimensional filtering

*
*
*
*

subfilt
suconv
sufilter
sufrac

* supef
* sushape
* sutvband
* suxcor

124

APPENDIX B. HELP FACILILTIES

* sudipfilt
* sufxdecon
* suk1k2filter

Two-Dimensional filtering

* entropy
* suamp
* suattributes
Transforms and Attributes

*
*
*
*
*
*

suenv
suhilb
sufft, suifft
sugabor
suharlan
sulog, suilog

* sumedian
* sukfilter
* sukfrac

*
*
*
*

sulog, suilog
suradon
sureduce
suspecfk

*
*
*
*

suspecfx
suspeck1k2
sutaup
sutsq

Go to top
Gain, NMO, Stack and Standard Processes
* suagc
Standard Procs

Miscellaneous

Velocity Analysis

*
*
*
*

sudivcor
sugain
sumix
sumute

*
*
*
*
*
*
*

suacor
suttoz
suvibro
suvlength
dzdv
sudivstack
surelan

* sunmo
* supgc
* suresstat
* sustack
* sustatic
* unglitch

* suvelan
* velpert

Go to top
Graphics
X-window ... for SU format
input data
(see binary form for full
options)
X-window ... for binary
input data

Postscript ... for SU

format input data

*
*
*
*

suxcontour
suxgraph
suximage
suxmax

*
*
*
*

sxplot
xcontour
xgraph
ximage

* supscontour
* supscube

* suxmovie
* suxpicker
* suxwigb
* xmovie
* xpicker
* xwigb
* supsmovie (NeXT
only)

B.3. SUHELP.HTML

125

(see binary form for full

options)

* supsgraph
* supsimage
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

Postscript ... for binary

input data

Utilities + misc

psbbox
pscontour
pscube
psgraph
psimage
fftlab
h2b
lcmap, lprop
merge2, merge4
prplot
psepsi
psmanager
psmerge
pslabel

* supswigb
* supswigp

*
*
*
*

psmovie (NeXT only)

pswigb
pswigp
spsplot

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

scmap
su3dchart
suchart
supsmax
xrects
xepsb (NeXT only)
xepsp (NeXT only)
xepsp (NeXT only)

*
*
*
*
*

segywrite
setbhed
suaddhead
suascii
suget

*
*
*
*
*

suoldtonew
supaste
suput
sustrip
z2xyz

Go to top
Import/Export

Import/Export

*
*
*
*

a2b
b2a
bhedtopar
dt1tosu

*
*
*
*
*
*
*

ftnstrip
ftnunstrip
recast
segdread
segyclean
segyhdrs
segyread
Go to top

Migration and Dip Moveout

Poststack migration

Prestack/Poststack migration

Prestack migration
Dip Moveout

*
*
*
*

sugazmig
sumigfd
sumigffd
sumiggbzo

*
*
*
*

sumigps
sumigpspi
sumigsplit
sumigtk

*
*
*
*
*
*
*

sukdmig2d
sumigtopo2d
sustolt
sumigprefd
sumigpreffd
sudmofk
sudmofkcw

*
*
*
*

sumigprepspi
sumigpresp
sudmotx
sudmovz

126

APPENDIX B. HELP FACILILTIES

Datuming

* sudatumk2dr
* sudatumk2ds

Inversion (True amp migration)

* suinvvzco
* suinvzco3d
Go to top

Simulation and Model Building

Simulation (aka modeling)

Model Building

Utilities

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

gbbeam
normray
rayt2d
sufdmod2
suimp2d
suimp3d
sukdsyn2d
sureflpsvsh
makevel
regrid3
suintvel
sustkvel
tetramod
tri2uni
kaperture
smooth2
smooth3d
smoothint2
suplane

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

susyncz
susynlv
susynlvcw
susynvxz
susynvxzcs
triray
triseis
wkbj
trimodel
uni2tri
unif2
unisam
unisam2
velconv
suspike
trip (Mesa 3D item)
viewer3 (Mesa 3D item)
vtlvz
xy2z

Go to top
Utilities

Utilities

Help utilities

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

copyright
cpall
cpusec
cputime
ctrlstrip
dirtree
downfort
farith
filetype
isatty
lookpar
maxints
mkparfile
newcase
cwpfind
gendocs
sudoc
sufind

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

overwrite
pause
precedence
replace
rmaxdiff
sumax
sumean
sumedian
sunormalize
supickamp
sushift
suweight
t
this_year
sugendocs
suhelp
suname
sukeyword

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

time_now
todays_date
updatedoc
updatedocall
updatehead
upfort
usernames
varlist
wallsec
walltime
weekday
zap

B.4. SUKEYWORD - LIST THE SU DATATYPE (SEGY) KEYWORDS

127

Go to top

B.4

SUKEYWORD - list the SU datatype (SEGY) Keywords

The following is the listing put out by

typedef struct { /* segy - trace identification header */

int tracl; /* trace sequence number within line */
int tracr; /* trace sequence number within reel */
int fldr; /* field record number */
int tracf; /* trace number within field record */
int ep; /* energy source point number */
int cdp; /* CDP ensemble number */
int cdpt; /* trace number within CDP ensemble */
short trid; /* trace identification code:
1 = seismic data
2 = dead
3 = dummy
4 = time break
5 = uphole
6 = sweep
7 = timing
8 = water break
9---, N = optional use (N = 32,767)
Following are CWP id flags:
9 = autocorrelation
10 = Fourier transformed - no packing
xr[0],xi[0], ..., xr[N-1],xi[N-1]
11 = Fourier transformed - unpacked Nyquist
xr[0],xi[0],...,xr[N/2],xi[N/2]
12 = Fourier transformed - packed Nyquist
even N:
xr[0],xr[N/2],xr[1],xi[1], ...,
xr[N/2 -1],xi[N/2 -1]

128

APPENDIX B. HELP FACILILTIES

(note the exceptional second entry)

odd N:
xr[0],xr[(N-1)/2],xr[1],xi[1], ...,
xr[(N-1)/2 -1],xi[(N-1)/2 -1],xi[(N-1)/2]
(note the exceptional second & last entries)
13 = Complex signal in the time domain
xr[0],xi[0], ..., xr[N-1],xi[N-1]
14 = Fourier transformed - amplitude/phase
a[0],p[0], ..., a[N-1],p[N-1]
15 = Complex time signal - amplitude/phase
a[0],p[0], ..., a[N-1],p[N-1]
16 = Real part of complex trace from 0 to Nyquist
17 = Imag part of complex trace from 0 to Nyquist
18 = Amplitude of complex trace from 0 to Nyquist
19 = Phase of complex trace from 0 to Nyquist
21 = Wavenumber time domain (k-t)
22 = Wavenumber frequency (k-omega)
23 = Envelope of the complex time trace
24 = Phase of the complex time trace
25 = Frequency of the complex time trace
30 = Depth-Range (z-x) traces
43 = Seismic Data, Vertical Component
44 = Seismic Data, Horizontal Component 1
45 = Seismic Data, Horizontal Component 2
46 = Seismic Data, Radial Component
47 = Seismic Data, Transverse Component
101 = Seismic data packed to bytes (by supack1)
102 = Seismic data packed to 2 bytes (by supack2)
*/
short nvs; /* number of vertically summed traces (see vscode
in bhed structure) */

B.4. SUKEYWORD - LIST THE SU DATATYPE (SEGY) KEYWORDS

short nhs; /* number of horizontally summed traces (see vscode

in bhed structure) */
short duse; /* data use:
1 = production
2 = test */
int offset; /* distance from source point to receiver
group (negative if opposite to direction
in which the line was shot) */
int gelev; /* receiver group elevation from sea level
(above sea level is positive) */
int selev; /* source elevation from sea level
(above sea level is positive) */
int sdepth; /* source depth (positive) */
int gdel; /* datum elevation at receiver group */
int sdel; /* datum elevation at source */
int swdep; /* water depth at source */
int gwdep; /* water depth at receiver group */
short scalel; /* scale factor for previous 7 entries
with value plus or minus 10 to the
power 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 (if positive,
multiply, if negative divide) */
short scalco; /* scale factor for next 4 entries
with value plus or minus 10 to the
power 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 (if positive,
multiply, if negative divide) */
int

sx; /* X source coordinate */

int

sy; /* Y source coordinate */

int

gx; /* X group coordinate */

int

gy; /* Y group coordinate */

short counit; /* coordinate units code:

for previous four entries
1 = length (meters or feet)
2 = seconds of arc (in this case, the
X values are longitude and the Y values
are latitude, a positive value designates

129

130

APPENDIX B. HELP FACILILTIES

the number of seconds east of Greenwich

or north of the equator */
short wevel; /* weathering velocity */
short swevel; /* subweathering velocity */
short sut; /* uphole time at source */
short gut; /* uphole time at receiver group */
short sstat; /* source static correction */
short gstat; /* group static correction */
short tstat; /* total static applied */
short laga; /* lag time A, time in ms between end of 240byte trace identification header and time
break, positive if time break occurs after
end of header, time break is defined as
the initiation pulse which maybe recorded
on an auxiliary trace or as otherwise
specified by the recording system */
short lagb; /* lag time B, time in ms between the time break
and the initiation time of the energy source,
may be positive or negative */
short delrt; /* delay recording time, time in ms between
initiation time of energy source and time
when recording of data samples begins
(for deep water work if recording does not
start at zero time) */
short muts; /* mute time--start */
short mute; /* mute time--end */
unsigned short ns; /* number of samples in this trace */
unsigned short dt; /* sample interval; in micro-seconds */
short gain; /* gain type of field instruments code:
1 = fixed
2 = binary
3 = floating point
4 ---- N = optional use */
short igc; /* instrument gain constant */
short igi; /* instrument early or initial gain */

B.4. SUKEYWORD - LIST THE SU DATATYPE (SEGY) KEYWORDS

short corr; /* correlated:

1 = no
2 = yes */
short sfs; /* sweep frequency at start */
short sfe; /* sweep frequency at end */
short slen; /* sweep length in ms */
short styp; /* sweep type code:
1 = linear
2 = cos-squared
3 = other */
short stas; /* sweep trace length at start in ms */
short stae; /* sweep trace length at end in ms */
short tatyp; /* taper type: 1=linear, 2=cos^2, 3=other */
short afilf; /* alias filter frequency if used */
short afils; /* alias filter slope */
short nofilf; /* notch filter frequency if used */
short nofils; /* notch filter slope */
short lcf; /* low cut frequency if used */
short hcf; /* high cut frequncy if used */
short lcs; /* low cut slope */
short hcs; /* high cut slope */
short year; /* year data recorded */
short day; /* day of year */
short hour; /* hour of day (24 hour clock) */
short minute; /* minute of hour */
short sec; /* second of minute */
short timbas; /* time basis code:
1 = local
2 = GMT
3 = other */

131

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APPENDIX B. HELP FACILILTIES

short trwf; /* trace weighting factor, defined as 1/2^N

volts for the least sigificant bit */
short grnors; /* geophone group number of roll switch
position one */
short grnofr; /* geophone group number of trace one within
original field record */
short grnlof; /* geophone group number of last trace within
original field record */
short gaps; /* gap size (total number of groups dropped) */
short otrav; /* overtravel taper code:
1 = down (or behind)
2 = up (or ahead) */
/* local assignments */
float d1; /* sample spacing for non-seismic data */
float f1; /* first sample location for non-seismic data */
float d2; /* sample spacing between traces */
float f2; /* first trace location */
float ungpow; /* negative of power used for dynamic
range compression */
float unscale; /* reciprocal of scaling factor to normalize
range */
int ntr;

/* number of traces */

short mark; /* mark selected traces */

short shortpad; /* alignment padding */

short unass[14]; /* unassigned--NOTE: last entry causes

a break in the word alignment, if we REALLY
want to maintain 240 bytes, the following
entry should be an odd number of short/UINT2
OR do the insertion above the "mark" keyword
entry */
float

data[SU_NFLTS];

} segy;

B.4. SUKEYWORD - LIST THE SU DATATYPE (SEGY) KEYWORDS

typedef struct { /* bhed - binary header */

int jobid; /* job identification number */
int lino; /* line number (only one line per reel) */
int reno; /* reel number */
short ntrpr; /* number of data traces per record */
short nart; /* number of auxiliary traces per record */
unsigned short hdt; /* sample interval in micro secs for this reel */
unsigned short dto; /* same for original field recording */
unsigned short hns; /* number of samples per trace for this reel */
unsigned short nso; /* same for original field recording */
short format; /* data sample format code:
1 = floating point (4 bytes)
2 = fixed point (4 bytes)
3 = fixed point (2 bytes)
4 = fixed point w/gain code (4 bytes) */
short fold; /* CDP fold expected per CDP ensemble */
short tsort; /* trace sorting code:
1 = as recorded (no sorting)
2 = CDP ensemble
3 = single fold continuous profile
4 = horizontally stacked */
short vscode; /* vertical sum code:
1 = no sum
2 = two sum ...
N = N sum (N = 32,767) */
short hsfs; /* sweep frequency at start */
short hsfe; /* sweep frequency at end */
short hslen; /* sweep length (ms) */
short hstyp; /* sweep type code:
1 = linear
2 = parabolic
3 = exponential
4 = other */

133

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APPENDIX B. HELP FACILILTIES

short schn; /* trace number of sweep channel */

short hstas; /* sweep trace taper length at start if
tapered (the taper starts at zero time
and is effective for this length) */
short hstae; /* sweep trace taper length at end (the ending
taper starts at sweep length minus the taper
length at end) */
short htatyp; /* sweep trace taper type code:
1 = linear
2 = cos-squared
3 = other */
short hcorr; /* correlated data traces code:
1 = no
2 = yes */
short bgrcv; /* binary gain recovered code:
1 = yes
2 = no */
short rcvm; /* amplitude recovery method code:
1 = none
2 = spherical divergence
3 = AGC
4 = other */
short mfeet; /* measurement system code:
1 = meters
2 = feet */
short polyt;
1 = increase
geophone
negative
2 = increase
geophone
positive

/* impulse signal polarity code:

in pressure or upward
case movement gives
number on tape
in pressure or upward
case movement gives
number on tape */

short vpol; /* vibratory polarity code:

code seismic signal lags pilot by
1 337.5 to 22.5 degrees
2 22.5 to 67.5 degrees
3 67.5 to 112.5 degrees
4 112.5 to 157.5 degrees
5 157.5 to 202.5 degrees
6 202.5 to 247.5 degrees
7 247.5 to 292.5 degrees
8 293.5 to 337.5 degrees */

B.4. SUKEYWORD - LIST THE SU DATATYPE (SEGY) KEYWORDS

short hunass[170]; /* unassigned */
} bhed;
/* DEFINES */
#define gettr(x) fgettr(stdin, (x))
#define vgettr(x) fvgettr(stdin, (x))
#define puttr(x) fputtr(stdout, (x))
#define gettra(x, y)
fgettra(stdin, (x), (y))
/* The following refer to the trid field in segy.h */
/* CHARPACK represents byte packed seismic data from supack1 */
#define CHARPACK 101
/* SHORTPACK represents 2 byte packed seismic data from supack2 */
#define SHORTPACK 102
/* TREAL represents real time traces */
#define TREAL 1
/* TDEAD represents dead time traces */
#define TDEAD 2
/* TDUMMY represents dummy time traces */
#define TDUMMY 3
/* TBREAK represents time break traces */
#define TBREAK 4
/* UPHOLE represents uphole traces */
#define UPHOLE 5
/* SWEEP represents sweep traces */
#define SWEEP 6
/* TIMING represents timing traces */
#define TIMING 7
/* WBREAK represents timing traces */
#define WBREAK 8
/* TCMPLX represents complex time traces */
#define TCMPLX 13
/* TAMPH represents time domain data in amplitude/phase form */
#define TAMPH 15
/* FPACK represents packed frequency domain data */
#define FPACK 12
/* FUNPACKNYQ represents complex frequency domain data */
#define FUNPACKNYQ 11
/* FCMPLX represents complex frequency domain data */
#define FCMPLX 10
/* FAMPH represents freq domain data in amplitude/phase form */
#define FAMPH 14
/* REALPART represents the real part of a trace to Nyquist */
#define REALPART 16
/* IMAGPART represents the real part of a trace to Nyquist */
#define IMAGPART 17
/* AMPLITUDE represents the amplitude of a trace to Nyquist */
#define AMPLITUDE 18
/* PHASE represents the phase of a trace to Nyquist */

135

136

APPENDIX B. HELP FACILILTIES

#define PHASE 19
/* KT represents wavenumber-time domain data */
#define KT 21
/* KOMEGA represents wavenumber-frequency domain data */
#define KOMEGA 22
/* ENVELOPE represents the envelope of the complex time trace */
#define ENVELOPE 23
/* INSTPHASE represents the phase of the complex time trace */
#define INSTPHASE 24
/* INSTFREQ represents the frequency of the complex time trace */
#define INSTFREQ 25
/* DEPTH represents traces in depth-range (z-x) */
#define TRID_DEPTH 30
/* 3C data... v,h1,h2=(11,12,13)+32 so a bitmask will convert */
/* between conventions */
/* TVERT represents the vertical component */
#define
TVERT
43
/* TVHOZ1 represents the horizontal-1 component */
#define
THORZ1
44
/* TVHOZ2 represents the horizontal-2 component */
#define
THORZ2
45
/* TRADIAL represents the radial component */
#define
TRADIAL
46
/* TTRANS represents the transverse component */
#define
TTRANS
47

/* #define ISSEISMIC(id) (( (id)==0 || (id)==TREAL || (id)==TDEAD || (id)==TDUMMY ) ? cwp_true : cw

#define ISSEISMIC(id) (( (id)==0 || (id)==TREAL || (id)==TDEAD || (id)==TDUMMY || \
(id)==TVERT || (id)==THORZ1 || (id)==THORZ2 || \
(id)==TRADIAL || (id)==TTRANS ) ? cwp_true : cwp_false )
/* FUNCTION PROTOTYPES */
#ifdef __cplusplus /* if C++, specify external linkage to C functions */
extern "C" {
#endif
int fgettr(FILE *fp, segy *tp);
int fvgettr(FILE *fp, segy *tp);
void fputtr(FILE *fp, segy *tp);
int fgettra(FILE *fp, segy *tp, int itr);
/* hdrpkge */
void gethval(const segy *tp, int index, Value *valp);
void puthval(segy *tp, int index, Value *valp);
void getbhval(const bhed *bhp, int index, Value *valp);
void putbhval(bhed *bhp, int index, Value *valp);
void gethdval(const segy *tp, char *key, Value *valp);
void puthdval(segy *tp, char *key, Value *valp);
char *hdtype(const char *key);
char *getkey(const int index);
int getindex(const char *key);
void swaphval(segy *tp, int index);

B.4. SUKEYWORD - LIST THE SU DATATYPE (SEGY) KEYWORDS

void swapbhval(bhed *bhp, int index);
void printheader(const segy *tp);
void tabplot(segy *tp, int itmin, int itmax);
#ifdef __cplusplus /* if C++, end external linkage specification */
}
#endif
#endif

137

138

APPENDIX B. HELP FACILILTIES

Appendix C

DEMOS - a brief descriptions of the

demos
The directiory $CWPROOT/src/demos contains a number of subdirectories containing ready to run
shell scripts to demostrate SU programs. This collection is nowhere as complete as it should be, and is
continually changing and being updated.
BC Examples
Block: Demo for the program block in the free package UNCERT
3D Model Building:
Tetramod: Demo for tetra, the seismic wavespeed model building code.
Datuming: Examples of datuming
Finite Difference: Traditional Finite difference Datuming
Kirchhoff Datuming: Kirchhoff datuming
Migration with topography: Migration with topographics effects
Deconvolution: Deconvolution demos
Wiener Levinson: prediction error filtering
FX: frequency-wavenumber
Dip Moveout: Dip Moveout
Ti: Dip moveout in transversely isotropic media
Diversity Stacking:
Filtering: Filtering demos
Subfilt: Butterworth filter
Sudipfilt: Dip (slope) filtering
Sufilter: Polygonal zero-phase frequency filtering
Sugabor: time-frequency filtering via the Gabor transform
Suk1k2filter: Wavenumber filtering (box)
Sukfilter: Wavenumber filtering (annular)
Sumedian: Median filtering

139

140

APPENDIX C. DEMOS - A BRIEF DESCRIPTIONS OF THE DEMOS

Making Data: Making synthetic seismic profiles
CommonOffset: Common-offset and Zero-offset datasets
ShotGathers: Common-shot datasets
Migration Inversion: Migration (Inversion)
3D Migration or inversion of 3D datasets
Suinvco3d: Common offset migration in v(z) media
Finite Difference: traditional Claerbout FD migration
Fourier Finite Difference: Fourier FD migration
Gazdag: traditional Gazdag phaseshift migration
Kirchhoff: Kirchhoff migration
Sukdmig2d common offset: Common-offset migration
Sukdmig2d common shot: Common-shot migration
Phase Shift Plus Interpolation: PSPI migration
Split Step: Split step migration
Stolt: Stolt migration
Suinvvxzco: Inversion in v(x,z) media for common-offset data sets
Sumigpsti: Phaseshift Migration in Transversely Isotropic media
NMO: Traditional Normal Moveout correction
Offset Continuation: Offset continuation to smaller offsets
Picking: Trace Picking
Supickamp: Automated picking
Plotting: Plotting demos
CurveOnImage: Draw a curve on an image plot
Refraction: Refraction applications
GRM: Generalized Reciprocal Method for a single layer
Residual Moveout: Velocity analysis by residual moveout analysis
SUManual: Shell scripts used to make plots in the SU Users Manual
Plotting: Plotting demos
Psmerge: Merge PostScript files with psmerge
Xmovie: Make X-windows movies with suxmovie
Selecting Traces: Selecting traces by header values for specific operations
Sorting Traces: Sorting traces with susort
Demo: Sorting traces demo
Tutorial: Sorting traces tutorial
Statics: Static time shift corrections

141
Residual Refraction Statics: applying residual refraction static corrections
Residual Statics: residual source-receiver statics
Synthetic: Making synthetic seismograms
Finite Difference: finite difference 2D modeling
Impulse: impulse testpatterns
Kirchhoff: Kirchhoff modeling
Reflectivity: Reflectivity modeling
Tetra: Tetrahedrized models
Tri: Triangulated models
Wkbj: Upwind finite differencing of the eikonal equation
CSHOT: see the demos in $CWPROOT/src/Fortran/CSHOT
Tau P: Tau-p or slant stack filtering
Suharlan: Bill Harlans slant stack noise suppression algorithm
Sutaup: Traditional Tau-p transform
Time Freq Analysis: operations in the time-frequency domain
Utilities: Miscellaneous (and experimental) utilities
Sucommand: Demo for program sucommand
Velocity Analysis: NMO-based velocity analysis demo
Velocity Profiles: Make velocity profiles
Makevel: make velocity profiles with makevel
Unif2: uniformly sampled 2D velocity profiles with unif2
Unisam2: uniformly sampled 2D velocity profiles with unisam2
Vel2stiff: convert velocity profiles to stiffness profiles vel2stiff
Vibroseis Sweeps: Synthetic vibroseis sweeps with suvibro
The beginner is encouraged to run the demos in the following order:
The Making Data demo shows the basics of making synthetic data shot gathers and common offset
sections using susynlv. Particular attention is paid to illustrating good display labeling.
The Filtering/Sufilter demo illustrates some real data processing to eliminate ground roll and first
arrivals. The demos in the Filtering subdirectories give instructions for accessing the data from the
CWP ftp site.
The Deconvolution demo uses simple synthetic spike traces to illustrate both dereverberation and
spiking decon using supef and other tools. The demos include commands for systematically examining
the effect of the filter parameters using loops.
The Sorting Traces Tutorial is an interactive script that reinforces some of the basic UNIX and SU
lore discussed in this document. The interactivity is limited to allowing you to set the pace. Such
tutorials quickly get annoying, but we felt that one such was needed to cover some issues that didnt fit
into our standard demo format. There is also a standard, but less complete, demo on this topic.
The next step is to activate the Selecting Traces Demo. Then proceed to the NMO Demo. Beyond that, visit the Demo directories that interest you. The demos directory tree is still under active
developmentplease let us know if the demos are helpful and how they can be improved.
As the user becomes more familiar with the logic of SU, then he or she may feel free to run any of
the other demos either in their original form, or the user may modify the shell scripts to his or her own
ends.