Question

I tried to read from a file where numbers are stored as 16-bit signed integers in big-endian format.

I used unpack to read in the number, but there is no parameter for a 16-bit signed integer in big-endian format, only for an unsigned integer. Here is what I have so far:

number = f.read(2).unpack('s')[0]

Is there a way to interpret the number above as a signed integer or another way to achieve what I want?

Answer 1

Found a solution that works by reading two 8bit unsigned integers and convert them to a 16bit big-endian integer

bytes = f.read(2).unpack('CC')  
elevation = bytes[0] << 8 | bytes[1]