SHPCREATE(1)

💖 SHPCREATE — bestie, let's make an empty shapefile 💖

okay so real quick, this one lives in the shplib manual, section 1, and it's genuinely the easiest glow-up in the whole toolkit. no cap.

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✨ NAME ✨

shpcreate — creates an empty ESRI shapefile 🎀

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

shpcreate shp_file [point|arc|polygon|multipoint]

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

bestie, this little icon creates an empty shapefile that can hold shapes of whatever type you tell it. that's the whole job. she doesn't do drama.

but here's the tea you need to know: a "shapefile" isn't one file, it's two files that share the same basename 🌈 — one with a .shp extension and one with a .shx. and for the record those can also show up as .SHP and .SHX. the .shp one holds the actual shape data, and the .shx one holds the shape index. two sisters, one vibe. 👑

so how does it figure out what to name them? it strips any filename extension off of shp_file first, and then goes ahead and tries to create:

• shp_file.shp or shp_file.SHP — the data file 💅
• shp_file.shx or shp_file.SHX — the index file 💅

respectively, obviously. so if you hand it a filename that already has an extension, that extension is getting yeeted before anything gets created. periodt.

the supported values for the shapetype argument are exactly these four, no substitutions:

• point
• arc
• polygon
• multipoint

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• shp_file — the name of the shapefile you wanna create 🦋. doesn't need the extension, girl, she'll sort that out herself.
• point|arc|polygon|multipoint — the type of shapefile you wish to create. you must specify a valid option. pick one from the list, that's it, that's the rule.

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✨ EXAMPLE ✨

shpcreate testpolygon polygon

this will create a polygon shapefile named testpolygon 🌸

and to be actually accurate (iykyk): in fact testpolygon.shp and testpolygon.shx will be created. two files. as promised. ✨

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✨ EXIT STATUS ✨

she reports back with a number, and here's the decoder ring:

• 0 — successful program execution. slay, it worked. 🎉
• 1 — missing shp_file or shapetype argument. 😭
• 2 — unknown shapetype. 🙈
• 3 — unable to create the shapefile. 💀

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✨ DIAGNOSTICS ✨

the following diagnostics may be issued on stdout:

Shape Type `shapetype' not recognised.

Unable to create:shp_file

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✨ AUTHOR ✨

dbfdump is part of shapelib, maintained by Frank Warmerdam.

this guide was created by Eduardo Patoo Kanegae and converted to manpage by Johan Van de Wauw. it was further enhanced with the man page written by Joonas Pihlaja (jpihlaja@cc.helsinki.fi). credits where credits are due, always. 🫶

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✨ SEE ALSO ✨

dbfadd(1), dbfcat(1), dbfcreate(1), dbfdump(1), dbfinfo(1), shpadd(1), shpcat(1), shpcentrd(1), shpdump(1), shpdxf(1), shpfix(1), shpinfo(1), shpproj(1), shprewind(1), shptest(1)

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and that's the whole page, bestie 🧚 this one's from the shplib source, version vibes of March 2026, filed under SHPCREATE(1). go forth and create empty files. 💜