[GRASS-user] v.in.ogr fails on dbf with long column names

[Otto Dassau]

Hi Craig,

there are already several bug reports about problems (bad experiences) with the
10 characters limit in dbf. A simple solution is to use sqlite instead.

Regards,
 Otto

On Fri, 11 Jan 2008 06:04:05 -0700
"Richard Greenwood" <richard.greenwood at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Jan 11, 2008 5:42 AM, Craig Leat <Craig at pid.co.za> wrote:
> >
> > Hi
> >
> > I have a shapefile and attributes in a dbf file. The dbf has two columns
> > where the first ten characters of the column names are identical. The dbf
> > driver appears to only consider the first ten letters of the name and so
> > v.in.ogr fails reporting that two columns have the same name. Is there a way
> > to only import selected columns? I could also delete a column before
> > importing, but I am lacking some basic DBase know how so any pointers will
> > be greatly appreciated.
> >
> > BTW the dbf is too big (94,000 rows) to load into OpenOffice Calc.
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > Craig
> 
> dbf field names are limited to 10 characters. ogr2ogr (part of GDAL)
> has a -select clause which would allow you to select only specified
> columns, but might not be able to distinguish between the identical
> column names either.
> 
> Rich
>