[GRASS-dev] table only creation in v.in.ascii

[Hamish]

Benjamin Ducke wrote:
> However, I'd like to add the ability to read field names
> from the ascii input file to v.in.ascii.

that would be nice.

> Should I add a flag to interpret the first line as
> field labels?

It appears the scanning step may be interesting as a separate little
program, or a scan and exit. ie to prepare a columns= SQL line for you,
which you can check before using.
?
see also v.voronoi and v.delunay source code sharing, although I'm not
sure if that is the best implementation to mimic for a db.in.ascii.

> Does anyone know what the restrictions on DBF field
> names are? Length? Special characters?

10 chars long, case insensitive, spaces to underscores. 
Special chars may be ok but I don't remember ever seeing any, and
considering dBase's age I'd stick to [a-z][0-9] ASCII chars.


Hamish



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