#157: Clarification to Section 2.3 - Naming Conventions
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Reporter: ros | Owner: cf-conventions@…
Type: defect | Status: new
Priority: medium | Milestone:
Component: cf-conventions | Version:
Resolution: | Keywords:
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Comment (by heiko.klein):
Hi Ros,
we store several chemical components or isotopes in CF-compliant files.
These components often have a tendency to start with digits rather than
letters and I used the freedom of 'should' to name these variables e.g.
like "133Xe_concentration". I even send a ticket to the netcdf-group when
versions of netcdf (3.6-4.0?) forbid writing digits as first character in
variable-names. Most programs I know have no problems with these variable-
names (ncap2 does have problems, but I never found out if escaping of
variable-names is possible).
Most 'should' rules in CF exist for compatibility with COARDS. Changing a
'should' rule to a 'must' rule is definitely a change and not a defect in
CF, and in this case just to satisfy the COARDS convention, which I
haven't seen in active use any longer. CF does not enforce any other
restrictions on variable-names.
The only 'defect' in the variable-name description is the missing
definition of 'letter', which might have been a-zA-Z in a ASCII sense from
netcdf, but since NUG from netcdf-4 could include umlauts and is UTF-8.
Heiko
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Ticket URL: <http://cf-trac.llnl.gov/trac/ticket/157#comment:1>
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