A shapefile stores nontopological geometry and attribute information for the spatial features in a data set. The geometry for a feature is stored as a shape comprising a set of vector coordinates.
Because shapefiles do not have the processing overhead of a topological data structure, they have advantages over other data sources, such as faster drawing speed and edit ability. Shapefiles handle single features that overlap or that are noncontiguous. They also typically require less disk space and are easier to read and write. ArcView uses shapefiles just as it uses coverages - as a data source for a feature theme. The rest of the software functionality is identical for both shapefiles and coverages.
Shapefiles support data editing functions in ArcView. Shapefiles can support point, line, and area features. Area features are represented as closed loop, double-digitized polygons. Attributes are held in a dBASE format file. Each attribute record has a one-to-one relationship with the associated shape record.