Gdal envi driver can no longer read complex dataset

[jmichel]

When trying to read complex data with envi header using gdal 1.6.2, the following error occurs:

ERROR 1: The file does not have a value for the data type
that is recognised by the GDAL ENVI driver. 

This come from the following commented lines (frmts/raw/envidataset.cpp:1791):

/*  Removed JBP, ITT-VIS 11/29/2007.  Complex data does not display
properly in the ArcGIS application so we are removing it from the
supported types list. This is a bit of a big hammer as it may remove
functionality from some direct GDAL users, but this data is extremely
problematic from an ArcGIS standpoint.   */
/*          case 6:
            eType = GDT_CFloat32;
            break;

            case 9:
            eType = GDT_CFloat64;
            break;
*/

No wonder why I can not use my dataset anymore. I must say that I'm very surprised that every gdal users looses a valuable (SAR users will agree for sure) supported dataset types just to accommodate one software which is not able to display complex data.

[warmerdam]

Julien,

Do you have any, hopefully modestly sized and public examples of this data we could use for testing?

[jmichel]

The complex 32 bits raw file

[jmichel]

The complex 32 bits envi header