[Matplotlib-users] extract country borders data & convert to shapefile

[P. R.M. <rom...@ho...>]

I have a non-matplotlib related project that requires usage of GSHHS dataset shapefiles.
The regular GSHHS dataset doesnt appear to include political boundaries, however the GSHHS dataset used by matplotlib/basemap does include country/border data. I'd like to extract  matplotlib/basemap GSHHS country data & convert it to shapefile format.

specifically, the following files that are included with matplotlib/basemap:
countries_c.dat
countries_f.dat
countries_h.dat
countries_i.dat
countries_l.dat
countriesmeta_c.dat 
countriesmeta_f.dat
countriesmeta_h.dat
countriesmeta_i.dat
countriesmeta_l.dat

how can I convert these files to shapefile format, or where can I get shapefiles that already include this data & that are based on the GSHHS coastline data?

please help,
thanks,
P.Romero


 		 	   		  
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