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Post Closed as "Needs more focus" by Vince, Hornbydd, Erik, Jochen Schwarze, whyzar
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pstatix
pstatix
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I'm hoping somebody can clarify for me why .shp are limited to a 2GB file size? Having read through the ESRI considerations and technical description, I cannot understand why it exists.

Since they use dBASE for the .dbf component of the multifile format, it must abide by dBASE limits which have a maximum file size of 2GB. Although, that points to the same question, why does that limit exist? Does it have something to do with these formats being created when 32-bit OS' were widely used? If so, how does that influence the limit? I've seen posts regarding this as 2^(31-1) which is ~2.1GB but that just means 32-bit addressing is used, but I am not sure how it fits here. Other posts mention that these formats use 32-bit offsets, specifically "32-bit offsets to 16-bit words", but I don't follow that either.

I'm hoping somebody can clarify for me why .shp are limited to a 2GB file size? Having read through the ESRI considerations and technical description, I cannot understand why it exists.

Since they use dBASE for the .dbf component of the multifile format, it must abide by dBASE limits which have a maximum file size of 2GB. Although, that points to the same question, why does that limit exist? Does it have something to do with these formats being created when 32-bit OS' were widely used? If so, how does that influence the limit? I've seen posts regarding this as 2^(31-1) which is ~2.1GB but that just means 32-bit addressing is used, but I am not sure how it fits here. Other posts mention that these formats use 32-bit offsets but I don't follow that either.

I'm hoping somebody can clarify for me why .shp are limited to a 2GB file size? Having read through the ESRI considerations and technical description, I cannot understand why it exists.

Since they use dBASE for the .dbf component of the multifile format, it must abide by dBASE limits which have a maximum file size of 2GB. Although, that points to the same question, why does that limit exist? Does it have something to do with these formats being created when 32-bit OS' were widely used? If so, how does that influence the limit? I've seen posts regarding this as 2^(31-1) which is ~2.1GB but that just means 32-bit addressing is used, but I am not sure how it fits here. Other posts mention that these formats use 32-bit offsets, specifically "32-bit offsets to 16-bit words", but I don't follow that either.

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pstatix
pstatix
  • 426
  • 5
  • 14

Why are Shapefiles limited to 2GB in size?

I'm hoping somebody can clarify for me why .shp are limited to a 2GB file size? Having read through the ESRI considerations and technical description, I cannot understand why it exists.

Since they use dBASE for the .dbf component of the multifile format, it must abide by dBASE limits which have a maximum file size of 2GB. Although, that points to the same question, why does that limit exist? Does it have something to do with these formats being created when 32-bit OS' were widely used? If so, how does that influence the limit? I've seen posts regarding this as 2^(31-1) which is ~2.1GB but that just means 32-bit addressing is used, but I am not sure how it fits here. Other posts mention that these formats use 32-bit offsets but I don't follow that either.