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This article will explain in detail what file format shp refers to. The editor thinks it is very practical, so I share it for you as a reference. I hope you can get something after reading this article.

Shp is an open spatial data format developed by the American Institute of Environmental Systems, which has become an open standard in the field of geographic information software. In order to form a Shapefile, there are three files, namely, ".shp", ".shx" and ".dbf" files.

ESRI Shapefile (shp), or shapefile for short, is an open spatial data format developed by the American Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI). This file format has become an open standard in the field of geographic information software, which shows the importance of ESRI in the global GIS market. Shapefile is also an important exchange format, which can interoperate data between ESRI and the products of other companies.

Shapefile files are used to describe geometric objects: points, broken lines, and polygons. For example, Shapefile files can store the geometric locations of spatial objects such as wells, rivers, lakes, and so on. In addition to geometric locations, shp files can also store properties of these spatial objects, such as the name of a river, the temperature of a city, and so on.

Shapefile belongs to a vector graphics format, which can save the location and related attributes of geometry. However, this format can not store the topology information of geographic data. Shapefile was first applied in the second version of ArcView GIS in the early 1990s. Many free or commercial programs can read Shapefile.

Shapefile is a relatively primitive method of vector data storage, which can only store the location data of geometry, but can not store the attribute data of these geometry in a file at the same time. Therefore, Shapefile must also come with a 2D table to store attribute information for each geometry in Shapefile. Many geometries in Shapefile can represent complex geographical objects and provide them with powerful and accurate computing power.

Shapefile file refers to a method of file storage, which is actually made up of multiple files. Three files are necessary to form a Shapefile. They are ".shp", ".shx" and ".dbf" files. A set of files that represent the same data should have the same file name prefix. For example, to store geometric and attribute data about a lake, there must be three files, lake.shp,lake.shx and lake.dbf. The suffix of the "real" Shapefile is shp, but only this file data is incomplete, and the other two must be attached to form a complete set of geographic data. In addition to these three necessary files, there are eight optional files that can be used to enhance the expression of spatial data. All filenames must follow MS DOS's 8.3 filename standard (8 characters for prefixes and 3 characters for suffixes, such as shapefil.shp) to facilitate compatibility with some older applications, although many new programs now support long filenames. In addition, all files must be in the same directory.

This is the end of the article on "what file format shp refers to". I hope the above content can be of some help to you, so that you can learn more knowledge. if you think the article is good, please share it for more people to see.

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