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Format

Esri Shapefile Geospatial Metadata File

Summary

Name
Esri Shapefile Geospatial Metadata File
Identifiers
PUID: fmt/1729
Format type
GIS
Description
Esri Shapefile (actually a collection of files), was introduced with ArcView GIS software in the early 1990s, but is now used within a wide variety of software. It enables geographical datasets to be used between Esri and other GIS software. Esri Shapefiles consist of a collection of files within a directory. They always have files with extension shp, shx and dbf. The actual shapefile is the .shp file, but the other files are required supporting files. The shp.xml file is not mandatory, and stores geospatial metadata in xml format.
Note
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapefile Specification: https://www.esri.com/content/dam/esrisites/sitecore-archive/Files/Pdfs/library/whitepapers/pdfs/shapefile.pdf
File extensions
xml
Source
Yan Han / University of Arizona Library
Developed by
Esri / Esri
Supported by
Esri / Esri

Relationships

Has priority over

Internal signatures

Esri Shapefile Geospatial Metadata File

Note
BOF, offset 0-250, magic bytes: <metadata xml:lang="en"><Esri> EOF offset 0-5: </metadata>

Byte sequences

Min Frag Length
Absolute from BOF
Offset
0
Max offset
250
Byte Sequence
3C6D6574616461746120786D6C3A6C616E673D22{2}223E{0-2}3C457372693E
Endianness
None
Min Frag Length
Absolute from EOF
Offset
0
Max offset
5
Byte Sequence
3C2F6D657461646174613E
Endianness
None

Changelog

  • Updated in V108

    Release date
    5 September 2022

    Esri Shapefile Geospatial Metadata File: Amended description of byte sequence to match bytes. Submitted by Digital Preservation Department, The National Archives (UK).

  • Added in V107

    Release date
    21 July 2022

    Esri Shapefile Geospatial Metadata File: Signature researched and samples provided by Yan Han, University of Arizona.

    Esri Shapefile Geospatial Metadata File: Full entry added. Submitted by Yan Han, University of Arizona.