Hi Stephen,
The example you posted illustrates one of many netCDF4 features that
are creeping into datasets. One of your suggestions is to explicitly
loosen the rules and to allow CF to accept scalar NC_STRINGs.
There are trade-offs to such exceptions.
This might put CF on a slippery slope to greater netCDF4 acceptance
(good, IMHO) yet immediately puts a whole class of CF applications in
jeopardy of not working with files that are nominally CF-compliant
because they have an NC_STRING the application does not understand
(awkward, until application is "fixed").
However this issue is resolved, there is a workaround available now:
ncdismember (and ncks -3) automatically translates netCDF4 files to
netCDF3 files, and optionally sends them to a cfchecker. It translates
scalar NC_STRING attributes to NC_CHAR arrays.
http://nco.sf.net/nco.html#ncdismember
http://nco.sf.net/nco.html#ncks
Best,
Charlie
--
Charlie Zender, Earth System Sci. & Computer Sci.
University of California, Irvine 949-891-2429 )'(
Received on Thu Jan 23 2014 - 10:35:43 GMT
