[R] Error opening SHP file

Barry Rowlingson
Fri, 22 Jan 2016 16:03:35 -0000

We can duplicate the error by giving a path to a non-existent
shapefile, which is probably the original problem:

 > require(maptools)
Loading required package: maptools
Loading required package: sp
Checking rgeos availability: TRUE
 > foo=readShapeSpatial("fnord.shp")
Error in getinfo.shape(fn) : Error opening SHP file

The error message there isn't totally explicit, and might cover a
range of other possibilities such as a corrupted shapefile, or a
missing .shx component of the shapefile or whatever.

BUT you probably shouldn't be using readShapeSpatial anyway, as it has
a habit of not reading the coordinate system in the .prj file. I find
it much easier to use `raster::shapefile` which *does* read the
coordinate system *and* gives a more explicit error message for a
missing shapefile:

 > require(raster)
Loading required package: raster
 > foo=shapefile("fnord.shp")
Error in normalizePath(x, winslash = "/", mustWork = TRUE) :
  path[1]="fnord.shp": No such file or directory

"No such file or directory"

Barry



On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 2:25 AM, boB Rudis <bob at rudis.net>
wrote:
> Agreed with the others. After finding that shapefile and getting it to
> work you are definitely not in the proper working directory.
>
> On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 8:40 PM, David Winsemius <dwinsemius at
comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Jan 21, 2016, at 4:39 PM, Amoy Yang via R-help <r-help at
r-project.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Any advice for the following errors?
>>> state.map <- readShapeSpatial("maps/st24_d00.shp")
>>> Error in getinfo.shape(fn) : Error opening SHP file
>>
>> What does list.files('maps') return? Is there a
'st24_d00.shp' value in there?
>>
>>
>> --
>> David.
>>
>>>
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>>
>> David Winsemius
>> Alameda, CA, USA