[R-sig-Geo] measuring overlaps with many shapefiles

[David Epstein]

Hello,


I am familiar with R and GIS separately, but not working with spatial
objects in R. I have a PRIMARY shapefile and many SECONDARY
shapefiles. All are polygons and have a string "label" column for
features. I want to generate a nonspatial dataframe of overlap
measurements with the following columns:

1) label of PRIMARY feature
2) SECONDARY shapefile name
3) label of SECONDARY feature
4) area of overlap in square miles

I believe on way to proceed is to use "v.to.rast" and "r.stats" in
spgrass6. But, I am not sure if that is the easiest way. Any
suggestions would be appreciated.


Thank you,
-david