[Gdal-dev] using the GDAL.open in python

[francesco]

Hello,

I have a file from ASTER satellite which is called "001" and has a metafile 
called "001.met":  if I access to that file with the gdalinfo or 
gdaltranslate utility everything works just fine, but when I use python 
coding my own program, the

gdal.open(file,  GA_ReadOnly )

returns None and the error message is that the file 001 is not recognized 
as a supported file format.  How can that be?

I must say that it is a file from ASTER satellite with 15 subimages.

Any ideas? Thanks.
Cheers,
Francesco Pirotti