John,
What version of GEMPAK are you running?
The gdfile line length is 128 characters, so if you exceed that, you would be out of luck. Then I would suggest making symbolic links from the full names to filea and fileb like you outlined.
Another way would be to use the template feature such that you could say gdfile = ruc2|yymmdd/hhnn+ruc2|yymmdd/hhmm
Any and all should work (comparing against the current version of 5.7.2) I used (excerpted for relevant parameters here):
GDFILE = ruc2|040609/1800+ruc2|040609/1900 GDATTIM = f000 GLEVEL = 500 GVCORD = pres GDPFUN = hght^040609/1900f000+2 ! hght^040609/1800f000+1 TYPE = c CINT = 60 LINE = 6 ! 5 TITLE = 1/-1 ! 1/-2
The above plots the 500mb hghts using the file+1 and file+2 which you would need if you wanted to use fields from either in a computation such as: GDPFUN = sub(hght^040609/1900f000+2,hght^040609/1800f000+1)
You can also suceed with the following if you are not requesting fields from both files in one computation: : GDFILE = ruc2|040609/1800 ! ruc2|040609/1900 GDPFUN = hght ! hght
Steve Chiswell
Unidata User Support