[Fwd: Re: Fwd: [CF-metadata] units in cf standard names]

[Jennifer M. Adams]

Steve Hankin brought to my attention a post to this group regarding  
the udunits library. I have just subscribed to this list in order to  
post the following reply:

GrADS uses the udunits library to get the time axis information for  
netcdf files when the only available metadata is whatever is  
contained in the file itself.  The udunits library has some  
limitations (e.g. 365_day_calendar isn't supported), but it works  
well enough. I spent some time poking at the code a year or so ago  
when looking into fixing problems with no_leap time axes, and I found  
a lot of sloppy and complicated code I didn't want to have to  
rewrite. I didn't feel it was really worth fixing when it was much  
simpler to just ask the user to provide the right time start time and  
increment for those types of data files. Plus, I didn't want to have  
to carry around a patch to an external library for future releases.

Jennifer
--
Jennifer M. Adams
IGES/COLA
4041 Powder Mill Road, Suite 302
Beltsville, MD 20705
jma at cola.iges.org


On Oct 10, 2006, at 6:36 PM, Steve Hankin wrote:

> just in case this email slipped by -- GrADS uses udunits, doesn't it?
>
> From: Bryan Lawrence <b.n.lawrence at rl.ac.uk>
> Date: October 10, 2006 4:11:20 PM EDT
> To: Roy Lowry <rkl at bodc.ac.uk>
> Cc: cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
> Subject: Re: Fwd: [CF-metadata] units in cf standard names
>
>> The choice of udunits was made by COARDS. We carry on with it for  
>> COARDS
>> compatibility. Are there any other similarly comprehensive and  
>> flexible
>> standards for interpreting units strings? I think the main benefit  
>> is to
>> provide a general syntax, and secondarily some associated software  
>> for parsing
>> and converting units.
>
> Is anyone actually using udunits in anger with netcdf-cf data. If so,
> how? (I'm not dissing the importance of syntax, and coards ... nor  
> am I
> pushing a barrow for change here, just trying to understand exactly
> where we are ...)
>
> Cheers
> Bryan
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>