[CF-metadata] code that does semantic checking of CF headers

From: John Caron <caron>
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:24:37 -0600

On 4/19/2012 2:11 PM, Dave Allured wrote:
> Sean,
>
> I run into this frequently, especially with files that do not come
> from carefully crafted official archives. I regard all flavors of
> range attributes as frequently unreliable. I think best practice is
> to extract ranges directly from the coordinate values when plotting
> data on the fly, and pay no attention to incorrect secondary metadata.
> This should be simple to code and have no performance penalty.
>
> --Dave

In this case, its the data values that have to be read, in order to know
what the data range is, which may be expensive.
As long as they are hints that can be modified by the user, seems safe
to use.

OTOH, valid_min, valid_max are quite dangerous if they are not correct,
as seth found out. Generic software really has no choice but to respect
them. I recommend leaving them off if you dont actually need them.
Received on Thu Apr 19 2012 - 14:24:37 BST