[GRASS5] purpose of "format" field in cellhd?

[Markus Neteler]

Hi developers,

On Tue, Jul 31, 2001 at 03:01:44PM -0400, Justin Hickey wrote:
[...]
> Anyway, the reason for the mail, I have a friend who is trying to import
> Grass 5.0 raster files into other software, and he needs to know what -1
> means for the "format" field in the cell header file. I can't seem to
> remember and the programmer's manual does not indicate what a value of -1
> means. The value usually indicates how many bytes are used for storing the
> data but the minimum value seems to be 0 (which means 1 byte). Any idea of
> what -1 indicates?

as things are not fully set up here, I would like to ask you for an
answer which I can forward to Justin... I just can't remember the answer.

Thanks in advance,

 Markus