Hi everyone,

After I run 'shp2dta' to turn shape files into Stata data files, I notice I have some new variables, mainly Shape_Are and Shape_Len, see below.

Code:
. **1.0 set up County summary data
. 
. shp2dta using "$data/SA data", ///
> data("SA_data") ///
> coor("SA_coordinates") ///
> genid("id") ///
> gencentroids("sa_cent") ///
> replace
type: 5

. 
end of do-file

. do "C:\Users\Ivan\AppData\Local\Temp\STDbcc_000000.tmp"

. use "SA_data", clear

. 
end of do-file

. summ Shape__Are Shape__Len

    Variable |        Obs        Mean    Std. Dev.       Min        Max
-------------+---------------------------------------------------------
  Shape__Are |     18,641     3768344     7172291   .1502686   1.63e+08
  Shape__Len |     18,641    7156.082    8808.337   141.0763   90051.82
These measures are probably the area and length of each Geo item, but does anyone have any more information on these, the instructions for shp2dta don't discuss them much and I wasn't able to find anything online. What units are these measured in, and how are the defined more broadly? Just curious.

Any help appreciated as usual.