[gdal-dev] can't access e00 file using gdal...

[Andrew Loughhead]

Jeff Hamann wrote:

> Any hints? What kind of file is this, really? 

Its an "export" file from ArcGIS Workstation.  At the "Arc" command
prompt, its generated with the "export" command.  The export command can
export both vector and raster data, but I think its rarely used for
raster data, because the GRIDFLOAT and GRIDASCII formats are much more
straightforward, and I think ran massively faster too.

In one of those ArcInfo ironies, the "export" command produces data 
which can only be read by ArcInfo.

It looks like OGR has some support for vector data in e00 files, but 
that GDAL does not support the raster variant.

In a pinch you could probably convert the .e00 to an ASCIIGRID / 
GRIDASCII file by chopping out the data portion and constructing an 
appropriate header.  Note that the -2147483647 values in your file will 
be nodata.  Or maybe the source of the data could supply a GRIDASCII 
file.  GDAL driver for that is AAIGrid.  Just extract the actual pixel 
values to another text file, and at the top of that file put:

nrows XXX
ncols XXX
xllcorner XXX
yllcorner XXX
cellsize XXX
nodata_value -2147483647

replacing XXX with appropriate values.  That will only work if the pixel 
values in the file are in an appropriate order - I think top to bottom, 
left to right, but might be wrong.

hth
Andrew.