Why are spaces forbidden in the -convolve argument

[Jean-Pierre Coulon]

magick -convolve 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 works well but fails if I say 1,1,1, 1,1,1, 1,1,1. This would help me to arrange my array when it is bigger e.g. 7x7.

Any workaround?

[fmw42]

Put quotes about your arguments and see if that works. With spaces, the arguments are considered as multiple sets of arguments and not one set.

Also consider using the newer -morphology convolve rather than the older legacy -convolve. See http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/convolve/

[snibgo]

The shell (bash, or Windows CMD, or whatever) breaks the command line at spaces into arguments, passing each of those separately to the executable binary. But it treats a quoted string as a single arguments, even if it contains spaces.

For Windows, use double-quote: ".

For bash, use single-quote ' or double-quote ", according to your needs.

[Jean-Pierre Coulon]

With Windows I obtain what I want with
magick chunk.png -convolve ^
0,0,3,4,3,0,0,^
3,4,4,4,4,4,3,^ etc.

[fmw42]

With Windows I obtain what I want with
magick chunk.png -convolve ^
0,0,3,4,3,0,0,^
3,4,4,4,4,4,3,^ etc.

You have no spaces so it works fine. The issue was when the argument to -convolve has spaces, which require quoting.