[CF-metadata] standard names for stations (Jonathan Gregory)

From: Schultz, Martin <m.schultz>
Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2011 15:29:33 +0200

> Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:33:26 +0100
> From: Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory at reading.ac.uk>
> Subject: Re: [CF-metadata] standard names for stations
> Dear Nan
>
> > Do we need to specify whether the _id is numeric or character? I'd
> > prefer to leave that to the user and his code.
>
> Yes, I think we have to specify this for standard_names; in the standard
> name table, all of them are either assigned units => numeric, or stated to be
> "string". Of course, a number can be written in a string, and maybe that's the
> right thing to do if this variable would never be processed as a number.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Jonathan
>

Dear Jonathan,

... but strings may be formatted differently. "001" is not the same as "1" or "01". I think you are right about using strings instead of numbers (if sometimes the ID can actually be a string), but someone (in the user community) then needs to define the formatting of number IDs.

Martin


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Received on Tue Sep 06 2011 - 07:29:33 BST