What is the latest re: reading HDF files with R?

Greetings:

This week I am working with HDF format files containing ocean color  
imagery (CZCS, SeaWIFS) secured from NASA GSFC,
and would like to bring the image maps into the R environment.

One way I have done this is to use the SeaDAS software to extract a  
2-dim binary floating point matrix (from the HDF file)
and write it to disk, then use R pixmap() to read it in to a  
vector. This works, but one loses all of the image attributes
contained in the HDF header. Now, it would be good to read the HDF  
file directly into R, capturing the header attributes.

I have tried the R HDF5 library routine hdf5load(), which seems to  
read the new .hdf5 format
but NOT the older .hdf format (I tried, unsuccessfully)

Question is: Has anyone developed a technique to read HDF files  
with R?

Thanks in advance, Rick R

-- 
Rick Reeves	
Scientific Programmer / Analyst	
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
UC Santa Barbara
reeves at nceas.ucsb.edu
www.nceas.ucsb.edu
805 892 2533

<reeves.vcf>

I have never done this, so may be missing something obvious, but can 
you not use rgdal ?  GDAL lists HDF4 as a supported format.

Cheers,
Scott

On 10-Jan-07, at 14:49, Rick Reeves wrote:

Greetings:

This week I am working with HDF format files containing ocean color 
imagery (CZCS, SeaWIFS) secured from NASA GSFC,
and would like to bring the image maps into the R environment.

One way I have done this is to use the SeaDAS software to extract a 
2-dim binary floating point matrix (from the HDF file)
and write it to disk, then use R pixmap() to read it in to a vector. 
This works, but one loses all of the image attributes
contained in the HDF header. Now, it would be good to read the HDF 
file directly into R, capturing the header attributes.

I have tried the R HDF5 library routine hdf5load(), which seems to 
read the new .hdf5 format
but NOT the older .hdf format (I tried, unsuccessfully)

Question is: Has anyone developed a technique to read HDF files with R?

Thanks in advance, Rick R

--Rick Reeves   
Scientific Programmer / Analyst   
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
UC Santa Barbara
reeves at nceas.ucsb.edu
www.nceas.ucsb.edu
805 892 2533

<reeves.vcf>

Good idea, Scott. I had forgotten about rgdal. Doesen't come up in the R 
topic search. RR

Scott W Mitchell wrote:

I have never done this, so may be missing something obvious, but can 
you not use rgdal ?  GDAL lists HDF4 as a supported format.

Cheers,
Scott

On 10-Jan-07, at 14:49, Rick Reeves wrote:

Greetings:

This week I am working with HDF format files containing ocean color 
imagery (CZCS, SeaWIFS) secured from NASA GSFC,
and would like to bring the image maps into the R environment.

One way I have done this is to use the SeaDAS software to extract a 
2-dim binary floating point matrix (from the HDF file)
and write it to disk, then use R pixmap() to read it in to a vector. 
This works, but one loses all of the image attributes
contained in the HDF header. Now, it would be good to read the HDF 
file directly into R, capturing the header attributes.

I have tried the R HDF5 library routine hdf5load(), which seems to 
read the new .hdf5 format
but NOT the older .hdf format (I tried, unsuccessfully)

Question is: Has anyone developed a technique to read HDF files with R?

Thanks in advance, Rick R

--Rick Reeves   
Scientific Programmer / Analyst   
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
UC Santa Barbara
reeves at nceas.ucsb.edu
www.nceas.ucsb.edu
805 892 2533

<reeves.vcf>

Greetings:

This week I am working with HDF format files containing ocean color 
imagery (CZCS, SeaWIFS) secured from NASA GSFC,
and would like to bring the image maps into the R environment.