ShapefileAttribute.Name Property
Gets the name of the attribute.
Syntax
public System.String Name { get; }Property Value
The attribute name.
Remarks
Technically, the DBF format reserves 11 bytes for an attribute name, but many GIS systems assumes that the name will be null-terminated, so Carmenta Engine will write at most 10 bytes, so that the 11th byte can be null. Note that the number of bytes required for the name may depend on the ShapefileSchema.CodePage.
Also, Carmenta uses a special convention for an attribute of type Atom, a type that is not supported in the DBF format. The atom values will be stored as DBF strings, but the name will be stored with a prefixed #, which tells the shapefile reader that the values represent atoms.
If a name is too long, there could be an exception or just a warning:
If the name (with a prefixed # if Atom) would require more than 11 bytes, an exception will be thrown when the attribute is used to write data to a Shapefile.
If the name (with a prefixed # if Atom) would require exactly 11 bytes, no exception will be thrown but a warning will be logged, and the actual attribute name written to the Shapefile will have its last character removed.
Carmenta Engine will store non-ASCII attribute names with the same code page as string attribute values, which has become a common practice for Shapefile data. However, the original specification of the DBF format required attribute names to be in ASCII, unlike string attribute values (dBL Language Reference: dBase Plus, release 2.6, page A-4). So if you want to be sure the Shapefile will be readable by other GIS systems on other machines, use only ASCII characters for the names; in fact, the most conservative practice would be to use only uppercase letters A to Z, digits, and underscore characters.
Platforms
Windows, Linux, Android