[R] Mapinfo mid and mif files

[F. Tusell]

Not sure if it will work straight with .mid or .mif files, but it works 
for me on .tab files, which were
supposed to be read with the Excel map tool package and beleive confro 
to the MapInfo format.

I asked Roger Bivand at the recent useR!2004 meeting and he made several 
suggestions. Following the
leads he gave me, I found a small program (ogr2ogr) which translates my 
.tab files into .shp files,
which I can then read into R. The MapInfo format is explicitly supported.

I use Debian Linux (sarge), and ogr2ogr  is part of the package 
gdal-bin. A batch
file like

for i in *.tab ; do
ogr2ogr ${i%.*}.shp $i ;
done

converted a bunch of files in a snap. Hope it may be of help to you.

ft.

-- 
Fernando TUSELL                                e-mail:
Departamento de Econometría y Estadística           etptupaf at bs.ehu.es 
Facultad de CC.EE. y Empresariales             Tel:   (+34)94.601.3733
Avenida Lendakari Aguirre, 83                  Fax:   (+34)94.601.3754
E-48015 BILBAO  (Spain)                        Secr:  (+34)94.601.3740