> @marqh I like the overall suggestion of RFC3986. I think we should not adopt 
> the "% encoding" concept of RFC3986. And, again, I think we should reserve 
> leading "_" characters (per NUG) and multiple sequential "_" characters (per 
> netCDF-LD). Are there any other special character sequences in the wild that 
> anyone is aware of — in UGRID or Radial perhaps?

I agree, @JimBiardCics, that adoption of %encoding is not a path I would want 
to walk.  it's perhaps a useful cross reference, but points like this suggest 
against including some specific use of RFC3986 within CF

> I notice that the NUG section you referenced implies that space characters 
> are allowed as long as they are not at the end of a variable name. Do we want 
> to allow internal spaces?

internal spaces!?!? really

if we can stop that, then that is a good thing.  Why would the NUG allow 
variable names with spaces in them??

my reading of 
> The names of dimensions, variables and attributes (and, in netCDF-4 files, 
> groups, user-defined types, compound member names, and enumeration symbols) 
> consist of arbitrary sequences of alphanumeric characters, underscore '_', 
> period '.', plus '+', hyphen '-', or at sign '@', but beginning with an 
> alphanumeric character or underscore. However names commencing with 
> underscore are reserved for system use.

lead me to view space as not allowed.  However the following:

> Beginning with versions 3.6.3 and 4.0, names may also include UTF-8 encoded 
> Unicode characters as well as other special characters, except for the 
> character '/', which may not appear in a name.
> Names that have trailing space characters are also not permitted.

Could someone from a Unidata background confirm or deny that in netCDF4, a 
space may be used within a variable name?

-- 
You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
https://github.com/cf-convention/cf-conventions/issues/237#issuecomment-579278290
This list forwards relevant notifications from Github.  It is distinct from 
[email protected], although if you do nothing, a subscription to the 
UCAR list will result in a subscription to this list.
To unsubscribe from this list only, send a message to 
[email protected].

Reply via email to