People,
CF explicitly supports types char, byte, short, int, float, and double.
There are five "new" numeric types it could support:
unsigned byte, unsigned short, unsigned int, int64, and unsigned int64.
These new types are in netCDF3 (in the CDF5 encoding released in netCDF
v. 4.4.0) and in netCDF4. I suggest that CF 1.8 merge support for the
new numeric types. Please comment on this proposal.
The current CF 1.8 draft reads (Section 2.2):
"The netCDF data types char, byte, short, int, float or real, and
double are all acceptable. The char type is not intended for numeric
data. One byte numeric data should be stored using the byte data
type. All integer types are treated by the netCDF interface as
signed. It is possible to treat the byte type as unsigned by using the
NUG convention of indicating the unsigned range using the valid_min,
valid_max, or valid_range attributes."
I suggest replacing that text with something like:
"The netCDF data types char, byte, unsigned byte, short, unsigned
short, int, unsigned int, int64, unsigned int64, float or real,
and double are all acceptable. The char type is not intended for
numeric data. One byte numeric data should be stored using the byte
or unsigned byte data type. It is possible to treat the byte type as
unsigned by using the NUG convention of indicating the unsigned range
using the valid_min, valid_max, or valid_range attributes. The
convention explicitly distinguishes between signed and unsigned
integer types only where necessary. Unless otherwise noted, int is
interchangeable with unsigned int, int64, and unsigned int64 in this
convention, including examples and appendices. Similarly short is
interchangable with unsigned short, and byte with unsigned byte."
Section 8.1 on Packed Data currently reads:
"An additional restriction in this case is that the variable
containing the packed data must be of type byte, short or int. It is
not advised to unpack an int into a float as there is a potential
precision loss."
I suggest replacing that with something like:
"An additional restriction in this case is that the variable
containing the packed data must be of type byte, short, or int.
Use of unsigned types to hold packed data is not permitted since
they are incapable of representing negative numbers. It is not
advised to unpack an int into a float as there is a potential
precision loss."
The insertion of an Oxford comma in this last change is optional,
not intended to provoke an international incident.
Unsigned,
Charlie
--
Charlie Zender, Earth System Sci. & Computer Sci.
University of California, Irvine 949-891-2429 )'(
Received on Fri Sep 08 2017 - 14:39:31 BST
