Methods of archiving Unix Arc/Info coverage

In the Unix environment (Alai), Arc/Info can read, access, and write coverages without any problems. When coverages are directly copied to Windows or Macintosh environments, information is lost (filenames are truncated, capitalized, hyphens removed, etc.). With Arc/Info files, remember to name all files all in lower case letters less than 8 characters long.

To avoid these problems, you can either:

  1. Export your coverage in Arc/Info interchange file format. For example,
  2. % arc: export cover inputcoveragename outputcoveragename.e00

    The *.e00 file has placed all the small pieces of the coverage into one file. Make sure this file name is in <8+3 format to assure universal readability (8 or fewer letters for filename plus three letters for suffix).

    To import this coverage again in Arc/Info for Unix OR PC,

    % arc: import auto outputcoveragename.e00 newcoveragename

    % arc: build all newcoveragename

    The coverage has now been rebuilt and can be reopened and edited in Arc/Info, Arctools, or ArcView.

  3. Tar your Arc/Info data directory. This will preserve the long names and location of the various files. Use this only if the coverage will be reopened in a Unix environment. For example,

% tar cvf directory directory.tar

To untar this file,

% tar xvf directory.tar directory

Make sure to include a readme file with a directory listing and description of each file.