Jim, > I've got a few of questions. People have suggested using '.' delimiters > to build full variable names (path names). Since '.' has historically > been a legal part of a variable name, would it perhaps be better to use > ':', '\', or '|' instead? And why is '/' forbidden? Is it used > internally somehow, or reserved for just such a time as this?
There is currently a problem with using "." for such a separator, causing problems using DAP protocol to access data from a variable with a name such as "x.y", as described in this issue: https://bugtracking.unidata.ucar.edu/browse/NCF-178 Both netCDF-3 and netCDF-4 permit any character (including UTF-8-encoded Unicode characters) in names, except for '/'. The netCDF-4 public API already uses '/' in names returned or input to the functions nc_inq_grpname_full() and nc_inq_grp_full_ncid(), the same way it's used in HDF5 or Unix file systems (which also forbid '/' in file names). We've briefly discussed using '/' for emulating groups in classic-format files, with the library parsing and interpreting names containing '/' appropriately, but we haven't yet determined how practical this would be, or whether it could be implemented in a totally backward-compatible way. --Russ _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
