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

[Hamish]

> >>> Does anyone know what the restrictions on DBF field
> >>> names are? Length?
> >
> >> 8 chars
> >
> > Add 2:
> > "DBF column names are limited to 10 characters (DBF API definition)"
> [1]
> 
> That's really cool, because this says it's 12:
> http://www.gdal.org/ogr/drv_shapefile.html
> 
> (And I am pretty sure I saw 13 on some other page .. what a mess)


yeah well, the specification says field names are limited to 10 chars + a
null terminator.
  http://www.clicketyclick.dk/databases/xbase/format/dbf.html

there have been a number of variants over the years, so I wouldn't be
surprised if somewhere someone at sometime wrote in a 12 char field
length, but if that even exists I don't think it is very common or worth
worrying about.

Probably file a doc bug with GDAL; the OGR shapefile code limits it to
10,
http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/browser/trunk/gdal/ogr/ogrsf_frmts/shape/dbfopen.c#L716


> Anyhow, I have stopped working on the diff for v.in.ascii for now as my
> impression was that most people on this list would prefer to see the
> table-only-creation option added to another module instead.

note Markus has added a db.in.ogr module
(I don't think that includes v.in.ascii's automatic column scanning, but
that scanning code still needs a bit of work)


Hamish



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