I tried to put together a little script to test out some ideas. Things
worked OK to a point. I ran into limits on the number of segments I
could add to a line with v.split which limits the resolution of the
resulting swath map. I also ran into problems with v.buffer which did
not buffer the lines in the way I would expect. I put together a web
page with a visual of what I mean (use the script copied below):
...
2) v.split out-of-memory errors?
I found that v.split can not segment an input line into an arbitrary
number of segments. The upper bound seems to be <1000 segments per
line before getting an out of memory error.
Ok, I see a memory expansion happen, but I got ~135,000 segments for
60mb RAM. (using length=0.01 on a 1.35km line) Happens during
"Registering lines" phase, it looks like our old friend from
v.in.ascii points=`3 million` ?
You should be able to register a couple million line segments before you
run out of memory (c.2250 lines/megabyte) ...?
valgrind memory analysis:
http://bambi.otago.ac.nz/hamish/grass/memleak/v.split/
Hamish