Shapefile File Extension

Shapefile is a non-topological simple format used to store the geometric location and attribute information of geographical elements. Shapefile is one of the spatial data formats that can be used and edited in ArcGIS.

The shapefile format defines the ry and attributes of geographical reference elements in three or more files that should be stored in the same project workspace and use a specific file extension. These files are:

• . SHP-master file used to store element ry; required file.
• . Shx-index file used to store element geometric indexes; required file.
• . DBF-The DBASE table used to store the attribute information of the element. required file.

  Ry and attribute are one-to-one relationships based on record numbers. The attribute records in the DBASE file must be in the same order as those in the master file.

• . SBN and. sbx-files used to store the index of the element space.
• . Fbn and. fbx-files used to store the index of the read-only shapefile element space.
• . Ain and. AIH-files used to store the activity field attribute indexes in a table or topic Attribute Table.
• The. ATX-. ATX file is created for each shapefile or the DBASE Attribute Index created in arccatalog. ArcGIS does not use the ArcView GIS 3.x attribute indexes of the shapefile and DBASE files. A new attribute index model has been developed for the shapefile and DBASE files.
• . Ixs-read/write the geocode index of shapefile.
• . MXs-read/write the Geographic Encoding index of shapefile (ODB format.
• . Prj-a file used to store coordinate system information. It is used by ArcGIS.
• . XML-ArcGIS metadata-used to store information about shapefile.
• . BMP-an optional file that specifies the code page used to identify the character set to be used.

Each file must have the same prefix, such as roads. SHP, roads. shx, and roads. DBF.

When you view the shapefile in arccatalog (or any ArcGIS Program), you can only see one file that represents the shapefile. However, you can use Windows Resource Manager to view all the files associated with the shapefile. When copying a shapefile, we recommend that you perform this operation in arccatalog or using a geographical processing tool. However, if you copy a shapefile outside ArcGIS, make sure to copy all the files that constitute the shapefile.