[Fwd: Re: Fwd: [CF-metadata] units in cf standard names]

From: Jennifer M. Adams <jma>
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 11:59:43 -0400

Steve Hankin brought to my attention a post to this group regarding
the udunits library. I have just subscribed to this list in order to
post the following reply:

GrADS uses the udunits library to get the time axis information for
netcdf files when the only available metadata is whatever is
contained in the file itself. The udunits library has some
limitations (e.g. 365_day_calendar isn't supported), but it works
well enough. I spent some time poking at the code a year or so ago
when looking into fixing problems with no_leap time axes, and I found
a lot of sloppy and complicated code I didn't want to have to
rewrite. I didn't feel it was really worth fixing when it was much
simpler to just ask the user to provide the right time start time and
increment for those types of data files. Plus, I didn't want to have
to carry around a patch to an external library for future releases.

Jennifer

--
Jennifer M. Adams
IGES/COLA
4041 Powder Mill Road, Suite 302
Beltsville, MD 20705
jma at cola.iges.org
On Oct 10, 2006, at 6:36 PM, Steve Hankin wrote:
> just in case this email slipped by -- GrADS uses udunits, doesn't it?
>
> From: Bryan Lawrence <b.n.lawrence at rl.ac.uk>
> Date: October 10, 2006 4:11:20 PM EDT
> To: Roy Lowry <rkl at bodc.ac.uk>
> Cc: cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
> Subject: Re: Fwd: [CF-metadata] units in cf standard names
>
>> The choice of udunits was made by COARDS. We carry on with it for  
>> COARDS
>> compatibility. Are there any other similarly comprehensive and  
>> flexible
>> standards for interpreting units strings? I think the main benefit  
>> is to
>> provide a general syntax, and secondarily some associated software  
>> for parsing
>> and converting units.
>
> Is anyone actually using udunits in anger with netcdf-cf data. If so,
> how? (I'm not dissing the importance of syntax, and coards ... nor  
> am I
> pushing a barrow for change here, just trying to understand exactly
> where we are ...)
>
> Cheers
> Bryan
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>
>

Received on Wed Oct 11 2006 - 09:59:43 BST