[Mapserver-users] Shapefile merge-sticher?

[Eric Waters]

Hi,

I'm working on an open-source Tiger/LINE -> ESRI Shapefile converter (tgr2shp.pl) and I've run into the need for a utility that can merge polygons in a shapefile.  You see, the Tiger/LINE data is separated into county files, and some polygons (lakes, some rivers, etc) are split by these political boundaries.  They share common DBF info on both side, and identical line points.

Is there a command line open source utility that can stitch these polygons together?  Stitch any polygons that share common sides together based upon a DBF-compare code?  I'm currently working on a Perl script to do this (shp_merge.pl) but it's really kinda obnoxious and slow.

Eric Waters