Hi all,

We're trying to process large amounts of remote-sensing data currently
stored in hdf v4 formats.  I expect there may be a simple way to read these
files directly into R (ideally as a spatial pixels data frame) but can't
find the right function.  It seems that it may be possible to use readGDAL
or readOGR but I can't find an appropriate syntax in the documentation.

Most people seem to pre-process these files into an hdf_5 or netDCS before
importing, and this would be acceptable except we're looking to process
hundreds of files and would rather avoid learning another scripting language
just for batch pre-processing.  Are there any freeware programs that can
easily perform such batch-processing?

For a sample file, go to
http://oceandata.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/SeaWiFS/Mapped/8Day/chlor/1997/
download any .bz2 file and unzip.

The unzipped files are in hd_4 format, though they don't have any file
extension (.hdf or .h4).

Any assistance is appreciated.

Burton Shank
Northeast Fisheries Science Center
Woods Hole, MA

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