Re: [ferret_users] Multiple valued attributes?

[Ansley Manke <ansley.b.manke@xxxxxxxx>]

Title: Multiple valued attributes?

Hi Mike,
Ferret has syntax to define attributes and SET their properties.  This complies with the CF standard, but some parts of the standard aren't implemented.

-- The type presently can be set only to FLOAT or STRING
-- You can assign a multi-value attribute   DEFINE ATTRIBUTE/OUTPUT/TYPE=float  flag = {1,3,5,0,9}

There's no reason we couldn't allow for more types in the future. The only ones we'd have trouble with are double-precision ones, as the values pass through a single-precision internal Ferret variable.  Here is the documentation about access to netCDF attributes in Ferret,

http://porter.pmel.noaa.gov/Ferret/home/documentation/users-guide/variables-xpressions/VARIABLES#_VPINDEXENTRY_attributes

Ansley

On 11/19/2010 6:03 PM, McCann, Mike wrote:

Hello,

I’m trying to use Ferret to write quality control flag variables to a netCDF file and I have two questions:

1. Is it possible to define the type (e.g. byte) of variable?
2. Is there a way to assign multiple values to an attribute of this variable?
   

For reference, I am following the guidance in section 3.5 of the CF-Metadata 1.4 documentation:

    http://cf-pcmdi.llnl.gov/documents/cf-conventions/1.4/cf-conventions.pdf

-Mike

--
Mike McCann
Software Engineer
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
7700 Sandholdt Road
Moss Landing, CA 95039-9644
Voice: 831.775.1769  Fax: 831.775.1736 http://www.mbari.org <http://www.mbari.org/>