Re: [netcdfgroup] Allowed characters in variable names?

• To: netcdf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Subject: Re: [netcdfgroup] Allowed characters in variable names?
• From: Dennis Heimbigner <dmh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2010 10:58:23 -0600

Hieko-
You can have leading digits in variable names.
The only place this should be an issue is when
using ncgen with a .cdl file. In a .cdl file,
you need to prefix the digit with a backslash
character.  For your example, you need to
write the variable as \2t or \10u

=Dennis Heimbigner
 Unidata

Heiko Klein wrote:

I'm converting some grib data to netcdf. For variable names, I use the shortNames defined in my grib-reader (grib_api), which in some cases start with numeric characters, e.g. '2t' or '10u'.

This works well with 3.6.2, but when run on another machine (ubuntu lucid, netcdf 3.6.3?), I get an error:

NetCDF: Name contains illegal characters

I've seen that some of the variable-name code has been changed in 3.6.3 for UTF-8: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/docs/faq.html#fv22 but I haven't found out if the first character of a variable must be alphabetic (except in a very old user-guide at http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/~sfinx/netcdf9.html)

Are names like '2t' forbidden in netcdf, or is this a bug in 3.6.3, or is this a bug in my program, which just propagates to the netcdf error message?

Best regards,

Heiko

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