I have a shapefile with a lot (around 9000) line features in it. Many of these line features are either touching, or very close to touching, and I would like to merge these ones into one feature. Ideally I would then end up with a shapefile with around 50 features in it, each of which would have been merged from the features that were touching.
How should I do this from python? I know I can do it manually from the editor toolbar with the merge tool, but I can't seem to find how to do this programmatically. I've searched in various places and can't seem to find an answer.
Does anyone have any ideas?