Dear Seppo,
solution is easy:
after inspecting the file send by you I found:
1
20.899230,50.000000
20.899447,50.001083
20.899154,50.004016
20.899740,50.006950
20.900327,50.009883
20.900327,50.012817
^
This is not allowed and IMHO an error. After replacing the "," by " "
(space), v.in.arc likes the map 
I am not sure if even ARC/INFO would
like above comma-separated coordinates.
Don't forget (after running v.support) to set a proper scale with
v.digit (first screen).
Cheers
Markus Neteler
On Mon, Apr 23, 2001 at 12:42:31PM +0300, Seppo Kaitala wrote:
Dear Markus
Please find on your FTP the file riv2.dat as arcinfo ungen format file
for testing.best regards
Seppo
Markus Neteler wrote:
>
> Seppo,
>
> On Mon, Apr 23, 2001 at 09:49:05AM +0300, Seppo Kaitala wrote:
> > Dear Grass list
> >
> >
> > In trying to import rivers from WDBII from the costaline extractor
> > http://rimmer.ngdc.noaa.gov/coast/
> > in arcinfo ungen format. When I give the co-ordinates NS as 75N 40N and
> > WE 20E 60E, and the import this with v.in.arc I get the file with
> > mapextend (region) for the vector file as
> > 1:03 N , 0:03S and 18E and 62E. So WE co-ordinates seem to be less or
> > more OK but NS co-ordinates lay along the equator. Where might be my
> > mistake.
> > Many thaks for you time.
>
> could you please upload the dataset here for testing:
>
[...]
>
> Please notify me when arrived.
>
> Thanks
>
> Markus--
Seppo KaitalaMerentutkimuslaitos, PL 33 (Lyypekinkuja 3), 00931 Helsinki
Institute of Marine Research, PO Box 33, FIN-00931 Helsinki, Finland
tel. +358-9-613941 fax +358-9-6857 638
--
Markus Neteler * University of Hannover
Institute of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology
Schneiderberg 50 * D-30167 Hannover * Germany
Tel: ++49-(0)511-762-4494 Fax: -3984