What is the difference between SHAPEFILE and ESRISHAPE?

Hello @nicholas​ , SHAPEFILE is the new format that was designed to replace ESRISHAPE. In order to continue to maintain and improve format support, and also performance, we decided to update it for modern times. Under most user scenario the new format works exactly same but with increased performance and better UTF support. This format also supports Feature Tables!

Hope this helps.

My workbench used the SHAPEFILE Writer and kept corrupting the shapefiles. My solution was to switch back to ESRISHAPE.

@nicholas​ , it is possible that issues could have been created when re-writing the format. Would you be willing to share your workspace so we can take a closer look? If I'm able to repro it, we can create a support case for you.

I am running FME(R) 2019.2.3.2 (20200320 - Build 19825 - WIN64) on Windows 10

Both the contours and the tile index are in MGA2020_55 (Southern Hemisphere)

Half of the output shapefiles are written correctly, and half are not

I think there is a known issue with shapefile index creation with the new writer in FME(R) 2019.2.3.2 (20200320 - Build 19825)

We are also using the older writer to ensure indexes are created correctly