[GRASSLIST:7205] troubles importing shapefile (dbf)

[wouter.buytaert at tiscali.be]

Hello all,

I am having some troubles importing a shapefile vector map in grass60. The
vector map itself is correctly imported, but the .dbf is inflated from 2.3
(original .DBF of the shapefile) to >700MB and the data base entries are
all scrambled and contain a lot of garbage (when doing a d.what.vect). Importing
with v.external gives the same problem.

So I am looking for alternatives. Can I export the shapefile in Arcview to
another format which can be imported in GRASS without losing data (the dbf
contains about 10 fields)?

Or is it possible to use ascii format? The original dbf is recognised quite
well in a spreadsheet (gnumeric) so exporting to .csv is rather easy. Can
I import this ascii file a GRASS .dbf and then connect it to the vector map?

Another related question: What is in fact the role of the "category" of a
vector line? I suppose it is used as an identifier to link a vector to a
record in the dbf file, but does it have other purposes.

Many thanks,

Wouter