Hello @johnwilkin and @JonathanGregory,

Thanks for these points.

I think that the use of the `positive` attribute to determine the direction is 
sufficient and elegant - that works for me.

I am now quite troubled by the use `nsigma`, though! How it is  applied is 
surely dependent on whether one assumes one-based or zero-base indices `k`, as 
@JonathanGregory pointed out. And the possibility of it becoming incorrect when 
the vertical dimension is subsetted is not good. These problems all disappear, 
I think, if we insist on missing values for the out-of-range portions of `zlev` 
and `sigma`...

It's just occured to me that we dispense with `nsigma` and use missing values 
instead, surely we don't need to know the direction at all? and could omit the 
new text that says:

_"If the layers are numbered top-down i.e. with `k = 1` nearest the surface and 
increasing numbers for greater depth, then `sigma(k)` is defined for `1 \<= k 
\<= nsigma`. If the layers are numbered bottom-up i.e. with `k = 1` nearest the 
sea floor, then `sigma(k)` is defined for `nlayer - nsigma \<= k \<= nlayer`, 
where `nlayer` is the number of layers."_

With missing values, doesn't 

"_for levels k where sigma(k) has a defined value and zlev(k) is not defined:_

_for levels k where zlev(k) has a defined value and sigma(k) is not defined:"_

 give us all we need?

David

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