Shape Index-Files (*.qix) not used when .shp extension is specified in mapfile

[ujunge@…]

The Index-files (*.qix) of ESRI-Shape-Files are never used.

This behaviour has been verified using File-Auditing in W2000 
and has been observed for the builds  
  php_mapscript_40.dll from 8/5/2003
 and  
  php_mapscript_41.dll from 3/3/2004
(other builds have not been checked)

The only file-types accessed are the 3 standard-files (*.shx, *.shp, *.dbf)

I was wondering, why it maked never a difference (with respect to map-rendering 
time) wether qix-files are present or not.

[sdlime]

I'd be really suprised if this is a real bug. The code in question is years old
and known to work. Let's start with the obvious. Are the filenames for the .qix
files correct, that is the same case as the shapefile with a lower-case extension?

Steve

[ujunge@…]

Audit and data directory listing

[bartvde@…]

Maybe slightly related, if you use the following DATA statement in a LAYER
definition:

DATA "myshapefile.shp"

Mapserver looks for myshapefile.shp.qix instead of myshapefile.qix.

So you should use DATA "myshapefile" instead to get it to use the index.

[ummmmm@…]

I recently posted to the mailing list about severe performance problems that
turned out to be this same issue.  i.e. MapServer wasn't using our QIX files
because they were named incorrectly.  The documentation states that the .map
file DATA element can either specify or not specify the .shp extension, but
shptree creates .shp.qix if you use the extension, which MapServer doesn't find.

I suggested that at the least the documentation should warn of this problem
since we're not the first to make the mistake.  Mark Warmerdam suggested I open
a bug for the "qix name generator ought to deal with this more gracefully".  It
seems that this existing bug is a reasonable place to add the comment instead.

[ummmmm@…]

Oops - I specified the current behaviour backwards.  I guess shptree created
.qix, but MapServer was *looking* for .shp.qix because we had the .shp extension
specified in the .map file.

[pramsey]

Check for the .shp case and null terminate it prior to building filename

[pramsey]

Check for the .shp case and null terminate it prior to building filename

[pramsey]

Patched in trunk as of r7565. Patched in branch-5-0 as of r7566.

[jmckenna]

verified!

man I've been waiting for this one a long time...i can't imagine how many users didn't know about this one.

i've also updated the doc with this note (​http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/docs/reference/utilityreference/shptree/)