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rrgdal

R: readOGR() cannot open file

I downloaded a SHAPE file from here. I added to my working directory:

> list.files('/home/lucho/data/EnglandGIS/', pattern='\\.shp$')
[1] "england_gor_2011.shp"
> file.exists('/home/lucho/data/EnglandGIS/england_gor_2011.shp')
[1] TRUE

However, I cannot read it:

library("rgdal")
shape <- readOGR(dsn = path.expand("/home/lucho/data/EnglandGIS/england_gor_2011"), layer = "england_gor_2011")
Error in ogrInfo(dsn = dsn, layer = layer, encoding = encoding, use_iconv = use_iconv,  : 
  Cannot open file

The only other similar question with accepted answer is of not help. What is the problem? Is the data corrupted? How can I tell? (if you could download the data and try it yourself, that might be the best way)

I am using latest R with latest Rstudio, in Ubuntu 16.04.

Solution

  • To import shape files with readOGR you can either use 

    readOGR(dsn = "/home/lucho/data/EnglandGIS/", layer = "england_gor_2011")

    where dsn is the folder containing england_gor_2011.shp (and other files with the same name but different extensions, e.g. england_gor_2011.dbf, etc.) or you can specify the full path to the shape file (including the extension):

    readOGR("/home/lucho/data/EnglandGIS/england_gor_2011.shp")

    The second method won't work for earlier versions of rgdal as far as I remember.