Dear Karl
I think that allowing strings as an alternative to char arrays is a natural
extension and should not be problematic since the information content is the
same. It's good to hear from Jim that the cf-checker is happy with it. We
have discussed this before. As you say, the CF convention does not allow for
it at the moment, and so a change is needed. This depends on someone carefully
going through the document to see what might need to be changed to include
this alternative.
Best wishes
Jonathan
----- Forwarded message from Jim Biard <jbiard at cicsnc.org> -----
> Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2016 16:46:18 -0400
> From: Jim Biard <jbiard at cicsnc.org>
> To: "cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu" <cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu>
> Subject: Re: [CF-metadata] string variables and netCDF4
>
> Karl,
>
> The string type passes the cf checker as long as it is an ASCII string. It
> is possible to make a unicode string, and that fails. So, from a practical
> perspective, it is fine.
>
> Grace and peace,
>
> Jim
>
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>
> On Fri, Aug 12, 2016 at 12:31 PM, Karl Taylor <taylor13 at llnl.gov> wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I have a question from Robert Pincus that I don't know that answer to:
> >
> > Is it ok to use a one-dimensional ?string? variable instead of a
> > two-dimensional character variable to encode expt_label? This might be
> > asking whether it?s ok to use netCDF4, which I certainly hope is the case.
> >
> > He's defining an array of "labels".
> >
> > The conventions document states: "NetCDF does not support a character
> > string type, so these must be represented as character arrays."
> >
> > so my take on this is that a one-dimensional array of "string" variables
> > would not be permitted. In general do we forbid use of any of the new
> > netCDF4 structures? (I guess yes).
> >
> > thanks,
> > Karl
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----- End forwarded message -----
Received on Mon Aug 15 2016 - 01:46:02 BST
