Programming

Importing HDF4 and HDF-EOS Data

Hierarchical Data Format (HDF4) is a general-purpose, machine-independent standard for storing scientific data in files, developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). HDF-EOS is an extension of HDF4 that was developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for storage of data returned from the Earth Observing System (EOS). For more information about these file formats, read the HDF documentation at the NCSA Web site (hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu) and the HDF-EOS documentation at the NASA Web site (hdfeos.gsfc.nasa.gov/hdfeos/index.cfm).

Note    For information about importing HDF5 data, which is a separate, incompatible format, see Working with Hierarchical Data Format (HDF5) Files.

HDF4 and HDF-EOS files can contain multidimensional numeric arrays or text data, called data sets, in HDF terminology. MATLAB provides three ways to import HDF4 or HDF-EOS data sets into the MATLAB workspace:

• Using the HDF Import Tool
• Using the MATLAB hdfread Function
• Using the HDF4 Command-Line Interface

For information about exporting data in HDF files, see Exporting MATLAB Data to an HDF4 File.

Working with Hierarchical Data Format (HDF5) Files

Using the HDF Import Tool

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