[ferret_users] how to count the number of irregularly-spaced observations in each gridbox

["William S. Kessler" <william.s.kessler@xxxxxxxx>]

I have a long list of data triplets (x,y,value) that I am putting on a  
regular grid. No problem doing that, but how can I count the number of  
data points that fall in each gridbox?

I want to end up with a gridded field whose values are the number of  
the original (x,y) points within each box.

It seems like a simple task, but I can't think of a way to do it  
without a (double) repeat loop, or sorting and writing data out  
(twice). Ugly.

Anyone have a straightforward way to do this?

Frustratingly, the function SCAT2GRID_BIN_XY produces the bin-average.  
To do that it must compute the number of points in each bin. That  
number should be available to the user.

Thanks ... Billy K