Hello, I am using the -shp2dta- command to translate to Stata format shapefiles from the U.S. Census Bureau's Tigerline shapefiles program. Specifically, it is the file tl_2019_us_county (the latest available national-level shapefile containing geographies of all U.S. counties). I then use the -geotools- user-written command to export the component files back to a shapefile format (after having done some editing to the data portion of it). I am finding missing information in the output of shp2dta. For some reason, the Stata-translated coordinates file (coor("filename")) ends up with missing coordinates. I am finding that several of the features have several coordinate pairs missing (XY points, within the coor() file).
More specifically, in terms of the county shapefile, shp2dta produces instances of missing coordinate pairs for a total of nine (9) polygons (counties), in excess of the standard first one (I assume that every polygon comes out of shp2dta as translated with the first vertix (point) observation left empty, having no XY coordinates (as noting when observing the data in the data viewer, sorted by _ID), perhaps this being the designated polygon origin or start point not making it into the translated data file). In my case, there was one (1) polygon with a total of twenty seven (27) missing coordinate pairs, one polygon with eleven (11) missing coordinate pairs, two (2) polygons with nine (9) missing coordinate pairs, one (1) polygon with eight (8) missing coordinate pairs, and so on. Again, all of the above missings reflect that number over and above the one that I assumed is the standard first observation missing, as stated above.
With all those vertices / points missing, the polygons (county outlines) of course draw on the map as quite distorted in certain portions. I wonder if anyone else has encountered this problem, and would know where this could be coming from? I also tried -spshape2dta- with the same result. Thank you very much for any help.