how to read NASA .hgt binary files

Question

I\'m sure this is really simple if you know anything about binary files, but I\'m a newbie on that score.

How would I extract the data from NASA .hgt files? Here is

Answer 1

A tested numpy example:

import os
import math
import numpy

fn = 'DMV/N51E000.hgt'

siz = os.path.getsize(fn)
dim = int(math.sqrt(siz/2))

assert dim*dim*2 == siz, 'Invalid file size'

data = numpy.fromfile(fn, numpy.dtype('>i2'), dim*dim).reshape((dim, dim))