MATLAB: Problem reading ESRI Grid format

adfarcgridreadesri gridMapping Toolbox

I am trying to read ESRI Grid format w001001.adf file using arcgridread function from mapping toolbox. But I got the error message:
filename = 'd:\Mapping Toolbox\DEM_DATA\e148s36dem1_0\w001001.adf';
>> [Z,R] = arcgridread( filename );
Error using arcgridread>readHeader (line 81)
Unexpected tag '
Error in arcgridread (line 35)
hdr = readHeader(fid, isURL);
The folder where I am reading w001001.adf file has following files
  • metadata.xml
  • dblbnd.adf
  • sta.adf
  • w001001.adf
  • w001001x.adf
  • hdr.adf
  • log
  • prj.adf
Thank you.

Best Answer

There are two different ESRI (Arc) Grid formats: the proprietary binary format, which is what you have, and the publicly documented exchange format (Arc Grid ASCII), which is what the arcgridread function supports. There are several options that may work for you: (1) retrieve your dataset in a different format, such as GeoTIFF (GeoTIFF is publicly documented and is supported by the geotiffread function), (2) ask your data provider to use a different (non-proprietary) format to supply your data, (3) use ESRI software to convert the dataset to GeoTIFF, or (4) use the GDAL library (www.gdal.org) to convert the dataset. (To be best of my knowledge, GDAL has an ESRI Grid "driver" that is based on a reverse engineering of the format.)
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