Charlie, your unsigned proposal change looks good to me, except for one
question.
I must be very tired right now, but I don't understand why you are
suggesting the prohibition on unsigned types for packed data:
"Use of unsigned types to hold packed data is not permitted since
they are incapable of representing negative numbers."
Why should it matter? For example, Kelvin temperatures are always
positive. If I have a variable that stores such temperatures, why
should I be prohibited from storing it as a packed unsigned int?
Mary Jo
On Fri, 8 Sep 2017, Charlie Zender wrote:
> Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2017 14:39:31 -0600
> From: Charlie Zender <zender at uci.edu>
> To: CF Metadata Mail List <cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu>
> Subject: [CF-metadata] Add new integer types to CF?
>
> 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 )'(
> _______________________________________________
> CF-metadata mailing list
> CF-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
> http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
>
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Mary Jo Brodzik, Senior Associate Scientist, 303-492-8263
NSIDC/CIRES, Univ. of Colo. at Boulder, 449 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0449
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used
when we created them." --Albert Einstein
Received on Fri Sep 08 2017 - 15:55:41 BST
