vector map problems

[_Ray Drapek]

Hello GRASS Users,

     I'm having problems with vector files (again). I've been running GRASS
4.0 and was doing a lot of editing on vector files created in v.digit. I am
trying to patch two such vector maps together using v.patch. Both files have 
attributes associated with areas (area labels) and I want those attributes 
to be in the new combined map. However, the attributes for one of the maps
is never to be found in the combined map. I suspect that there is a 
corruption of one of the files associated with this vector map. Earlier
I did a v.clean on this file. After running v.clean all of the attributes 
disappeared from the file. I'm not totally sure that v.clean is what 
removed all of the attributes, but it is the only process I can recall 
performining on that vector file at the time that all of the attributes 
disappeared. I had the system administrator go into the archives and retrieve 
the old file (pre-v.clean) with its attributes. We copied two archived files 
back, the dig file and the dig_plus file. I examined the new-old map both 
with d.vect and with v.digit and it looked to be in good shape. All of the 
boundaries and all of the attributes were still there, but it is this new-old 
vector file that never passes its attributes on to the "daughter" file when 
patched with another vector file.

So what's the problem? Am I missing a file somewhere? Is there a corruption
to one of the files associeated with this vector map? My system administrator
recently got GRASS 4.1 running on another machine, do I need to port all of 
these files over to that machine and see if GRASS 4.1 can do a better job?

Ray Drapek
Department of Entomology
Oregon State University
drapekr at bcc.orst.edu