Russ (and thus core netcdf) has always been explicit about space-delimited
conventions, so really there shouldn't be any conventions with spaces in
the names.
On the other hand, we have adopted the technique of using the convention
name as a pattern to match against the convention attribute, so that we do
not care about delimiters.
This, of course, will fail if someone has a convention name that is a
substring of another convention name, and that convention is not a subset
of the convention with the longer name.
Benno
On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 10:42 AM, Jim Biard <jim.biard at noaa.gov> wrote:
> It is "easier" (not by much, code-wise) to not to allow commas as
> delimiters, but if you want to allow for machine-recognition of convention
> names, how are you going to handle conventions that have spaces in their
> names? Telling everyone else to get rid of spaces isn't a practical
> solution, and you have just created a thornier problem for coders who have
> to figure out which way someone dealt with forbidden spaces.
>
>
> On 12/22/2011 10:18 AM, Nan Galbraith wrote:
>
>> Thanks Russ, Dave(s), Jonathan and Lorenzo -
>>
>> Thanks for the clarifications. I agree that it makes sense to
>> require that convention names not contain spaces, and that
>> it's easier (and more CF-like, hence better!) to parse space
>> separated terms.
>>
>> Cheers - Nan
>>
>> The recommendation on the Unidata site for multiple conventions
>>>
>>> http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/**netcdf/conventions.html<http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/netcdf/conventions.html>
>>>
>>> is to use spaces rather than commas:
>>>
>>> It is possible for a netCDF file to adhere to more than one set of
>>> conventions, even when there is no inheritance relationship among the
>>> conventions. In this case, the value of the `Conventions' attribute
>>> may be a single text string containing a list of the convention names
>>> separated by blank space (recommended) or commas (if a convention name
>>> contains blanks), for example
>>>
>>> :Conventions = "XXX YYY" ;
>>>
>>
>>
>> On Dec/22/2011 6:01 AM, Lorenzo Bigagli wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> my opinion is to keep with the current recommendation, which better
>>> supports automatic parsing and the existing conforming datasets.
>>> In particular, I would avoid any parsing rule for the conventions
>>> attribute, keeping its syntax as simple as possible (as Jonathan points
>>> out, blank-separated lists are more CF-like).
>>>
>>> I think it makes sense to require convention identifiers not to contain
>>> spaces (as usual in identifiers).
>>> Those conventions that have not followed Unidata recommendation may be
>>> dealt with on a transitional basis (e.g. by means of specific parsing
>>> exceptions), while they are aligned in a future revision.
>>>
>>> Best wishes,
>>> LB
>>>
>>> Il giorno 22/dic/2011, alle ore 10:11, Jonathan Gregory ha scritto:
>>>
>>> Dear all
>>>>
>>>> The existing Unidata recommendation is OK and we could incorporate it
>>>> into
>>>> CF but it would help to be more precise, for instance: If the
>>>> Conventions att
>>>> includes no commas, it is interpreted as a blank-separated list of
>>>> conventions;
>>>> if it contains at least one comma, it is interpreted as a
>>>> comma-separated list.
>>>> Blank-separated lists are more CF-like - many CF attributes use that
>>>> syntax -
>>>> but obviously we can't insist that other conventions don't have blanks
>>>> in their
>>>> names, and it would be simpler therefore to use a comma-separated list
>>>> for
>>>> this attribute, despite the Unidata recommendation.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
> --
> Jim Biard
>
> Government Contractor, STG Inc.
> Remote Sensing and Applications Division (RSAD)
> National Climatic Data Center
> 151 Patton Ave.
> Asheville, NC 28801-5001
>
> jim.biard at noaa.gov
> 828-271-4900
>
>
> ______________________________**_________________
> CF-metadata mailing list
> CF-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
> http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/**mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata<http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata>
>
--
Dr. M. Benno Blumenthal benno at iri.columbia.edu
International Research Institute for climate and society
The Earth Institute at Columbia University
Lamont Campus, Palisades NY 10964-8000 (845) 680-4450
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/pipermail/cf-metadata/attachments/20111222/ce90bea8/attachment.html>
Received on Thu Dec 22 2011 - 09:56:26 GMT
