[Gdal-dev] Max no of layers in OGR shapefile driver

[Frank Warmerdam]

Dave Robertson wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm working with OGR and a set of 280 shapefiles each representing a 
> layer. I find I can open the first 84 shapefiles and all the rest return 
> error code 4 Error opening file). It doesn't seem to matter which 
> particular 84 files - I can't open any more than that. The shapefiles 
> are all one directory, along with their .dbf, .shx and .qix files. I've 
> looked at the source for the shapefile driver and I can't see any limits 
> built in there, and as far as I'm aware the operating system's limit is 
> 12500 open files (per process). The OS is OS X.
> 
> I have loaded all the shapefiles into postgis as an experiment and I can 
> read all the layers from there just fine, albeit slowly.
> 
> I realise I'm probably overlooking something obvious here, but any hints 
> would be very much appreciated.

Dave,

I believe you are running into a problem with maximum number of files that
can be open at once for a process.  Some unix systems let you raise this
with the limit or ulimit command.  I've never looked into it on OS X.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org