Data conversion between Shapefile and Geopackage: does it affect accuracy of data?

Question

I use Shapefile as interchange format and Geopackage as the format to to processing. So I convert file format at least twice between Shapefile and Geopackage.

Does/can this somehow affect the data accuracy and precision? I'm not asking about the limitations of Shapefiles like file size, field lengths etc., but accuracy of the data itself (comparable to reprojecting data several times: this can affect accuracy as transformations are not always exact). I work in QGIS, if that matters.

To resume a summary workflow:

1. Someone sends me data as a Shapefile
2. Than I convert it to a Geopackage to process it
3. Finally I convert it back again to a Shapefile to send it back

So to formulate the question otherwise: can I expect more accurate data if I avoid conversion and process the data as Shapefile?

Answer 1

I don't think converting between geopackage and shapefile has any impact on accuracy, no. Although you could check it pretty easily, covert the original data back and forth between formats a bunch of times (even more than you normally would to be sure) and then plot it against the original data and see for yourself.