NOTICE: This version of the NSF Unidata web site (archive.unidata.ucar.edu) is no longer being updated.
Current content can be found at unidata.ucar.edu.
To learn about what's going on, see About the Archive Site.
NOTICE: This version of the NSF Unidata web site (archive.unidata.ucar.edu) is no longer being updated.
Current content can be found at unidata.ucar.edu.
To learn about what's going on, see About the Archive Site.
NOTE: The netcdf-hdf mailing list is no longer active. The list archives are made available for historical reasons.
Hi Ed,
How about a function like this:
EXTERNL int
nc_def_compound_att(int ncid, nc_type compound_typeid, char *att_name,
nc_type att_base_typeid, nc_type
*att_typeidp);
This could construct a new compound type, suitable for use as such an
attribute. For example, after defining come compound type cmp_typeid,
you could create the type for a "units" attribute like this:
nc_def_compound_att(ncid, cmp_typeid, "units", NC_CHAR, units_att_typeid);
If you passed a base type of NC_NAT, the compound attribute type could
use the same type as each field in the compound type. So you could get
a _FillValue type like this:
nc_def_compound_att(ncid, cmp_typeid, "_FillValue", NC_NAT, fill_att_typeid);
Maybe I'm not following this quite right, but this doesn't seem to do quite the same thing as Russ's previous suggestion / example. In his example Russ defined a single compound attribute type for string attributes ('compound obs_atts') and then used this as the type for two different compound attributes ('obs_atts obs_var:units' & 'obs_atts obs_var:standard_name'), whereas it looks like this function would create distinct types for each compound attribute.
I'm not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing, I really haven't thought enough about it (and don't yet feel I have enough experience with the whole netCDF way of doing things to hold strong opinions on how it should be ;-), although I did quite like Russ's original proposal for its simplicity.
I certainly think adding an API function to do something like this is a good idea, though.
regards Simon Wood -- Simon Wood Meteorology & Remote Sensing Scientific Programmer NIWA simon.wood@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.niwa.co.nz ============================================================================== To unsubscribe netcdf-hdf, visit: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/mailing-list-delete-form.html ==============================================================================
netcdf-hdf archives: