29.4 bing geocode

20210525

The geocode command takes a supplied address and produces specific location details.

$ ml geocode bing [options] <address>
     -b            --bing               Generate Bing Maps URL.
     -g            --google             Generate Google Maps URL.
     -m <int>      --max=<int>          Maximum number of matches.
     -o            --osm                Generate Open Street Map URL.
     -u            --url                Generate Open Street Map URL.

The output, separated by commas, consists of the latitude:longitude (north/south : east/west) location, a bounding box for the region (south latitude : west longitude : north latitude : east longitude), the confidence that the identified location is a match, a match code (good, ambiguous, uphierarchy), the entity type. The remaining output is the identified address (generally including commas):

latitude:longitude,slat:wlong:nlat:elong,confidence,code,etype,address

For example:

ml geocode bing --max=1 anzac parade

The output is as below, though unlike here the actual output will be on a single line for each location identified. Multiple locations are identified when the location is ambiguous.

-33.955379486083984:151.2429656982422,
-34.12508010864258:151.07327270507812:-33.78567886352539:151.41265869140625,
High,Ambiguous,PopulatedPlace,
Anzac Parade, NSW, Australia

We control the maximum number of matches (1-20) using -m or --max= (the default is 5).

A URL (universal resource locator) can be requested for a map using either Open Street Map (preferred and the default for -u, --url, -o or --osm), Bing Maps (-b or --bing), or Google Maps (-g or --google).

ml geocode bing --url anzac parade

There are actually three matches for this address.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=-33.955379486083984&mlon=151.2429656982422&zoom=12
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=-35.2863883972168&mlon=149.14389038085938&zoom=12
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=-35.2863883972168&mlon=149.14389038085938&zoom=12

You can copy and paste the URL into a browser or extract, for example, the second match above and browse directly to that:

xdg-open `ml geocode --url bing anzac parade | sed '2q;d'`

The sed command (the stream editor) matches the second line sent through the pipeline (2 is the address), prints it by default, and then quits (q). Other lines before 2 (i.e., just 1) are processed by the second sed command d (deleted), as otherwise, by default, they would be printed. Simple sed commands can be separated by the semicolon (;). Because we quit after the second line, no further lines get printed. Thus this command extracts the second line from standard input. Change 2 to 3 in the sed, for example, to get the third line (the third match from the Bing maps command).

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