tgrline (Mapping Toolbox)

Read data from U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line files

Syntax

[CL,PR,SR,RR,H,AL,PL] = tgrline(filename)
[CL,PR,SR,RR,H,AL,PL] = tgrline(filename,year)
[CL,PR,SR,RR,H,AL,PL] = tgrline(filename,year,countyname)

Background

TIGER/Line files contain vector map data used to support mapping for the U.S. Census Bureau. TIGER is an acronym for Topographically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing. These files contain data for political boundaries, including states, counties, Indian reservations and census tracts, as well as roads, railroads, hydrography, and landmarks. In addition to the geographically referenced information, the files also contain data to determine the address of an object. The data covers the United States of America and its territories or administrative units: Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands of the United States, American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Republic of Palau, the other Pacific entities that were part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia), and the Midway Islands. The most common application of this data is to commercial CD-ROM road atlases.

Description

[CL,PR,SR,RR,H,AL,PL] = tgrline(filename) reads the set of 1994 TIGER/Line files which share the same filename, but different extensions. The results are returned in a set of geographic data structures containing the county boundaries, primary roads, secondary roads, railroads, hydrography, area landmarks, and point landmarks, respectively. The data is tagged with the name of the features.

[CL,PR,SR,RR,H,AL,PL] = tgrline(filename,year) reads the TIGER/Line files in the format from the specified year. The files are updated periodically, and the format and file name extensions may change from year to year. Valid years are 1990, 1992, 1994, and 1995.

[CL,PR,SR,RR,H,AL,PL] = tgrline(filename,year,countyname) uses the string countyname to tag the county data.

Remarks

This function reads only a subset of the data in the TIGER/Line files. For example, the function does not return local roads, Zip codes or census tract numbers.

TIGER/line files are available from the U.S. Census Bureau on CD-ROMs. Ordering information and an overview of other Census Bureau data products is available at:

http://www.census.gov/ftp/pub/geo/www/tiger/

Example files are available over the Internet at:

```
ftp://ftp.census.gov/pub/tiger/line/
```

Examples

Read from the data for Washington, D.C.:

[CL,PR,SR,RR,H,AL,PL] = tgrline('TGR11001',1994,'Wash,DC');

See Also

dcwdata
Read selected data from the Digital Chart of the World

tigermif
Read TIGER MapInfo Interchange Format thinned boundary files

tigerp
Read TIGER ArcInfo Format thinned boundary files

`dcwdata`	Read selected data from the Digital Chart of the World
`tigermif`	Read TIGER MapInfo Interchange Format thinned boundary files
`tigerp`	Read TIGER ArcInfo Format thinned boundary files

tbase tigermif