Fileout netCDF cannot generate a valid netCDF file when string datatype has a _FillValue
Description
FilenetCDF out fails to generate either a netcdf3 or a netcdf4 for OMPS due to a string datatype variable has a _FillValue. I can confirm this is not a netCDF bug since netCDF’s nccopy can successfully generate a netCDF-3 file. It is a bug inside the filenetCDF out. I use NcML to rename the _FillValue to _FillValueStr, then I can successfully generate nc-4 or nc-3 files.
Using NCML I can change the string _FillValue to another name and generate netCDF-4 or netCDF-3 files.
http://alpaca:8080/opendap/hyrax/data/ncml/ges_2017_eval/rename_string_fillvalue.ncml.html
Environment
Activity
James,
Great that you fix the filenetCDF-4.
For netCDF-3, I think you can map this DAP string array to a 2-D Char array. This is what nccopy does. Check the file
ftp://gamma.hdfgroup.org/pub/outgoing/ymuqun/myopendap/Hyrax-397/out.nc
This is the netcdf-3 file I generated with nccopy of the above HDF5 file via Hyrax. Particularly, the string variable is mapped to a 2-D char array and the fillvalue is not limited to one character. I think this case is allowed by netCDF-C since nccopy is distributed by Unidata's netCDF-C package.
char GeolocationData_UTC_CCSDA_A(DimAlongTrack, maxStrlen64) ;
GeolocationData_UTC_CCSDA_A:long_name = "UTC Image Midpoint Time" ;
GeolocationData_UTC_CCSDA_A:coverage_content_type = "referenceInformation" ;
GeolocationData_UTC_CCSDA_A:_FillValue = "0000-00-00T00:00:00.000000Z" ;
GeolocationData_UTC_CCSDA_A:valid_range = "2012-01-01T00:00:00.000000Z\n",
"2099-12-31T00:00:00.000000Z" ;
GeolocationData_UTC_CCSDA_AIMENSION_LABELS = "DimAlongTrack" ;
GeolocationData_UTC_CCSDA_A:origname = "UTC_CCSDA_A" ;
GeolocationData_UTC_CCSDA_A:fullnamepath = "/GeolocationData/UTC_CCSDA_A" ;
Kent,
I haven't fixed anything yet - I don't have time to work on this now. I just was talking with Dennis @ Unidata and he told me about the restriction on NC_CHAR variables and _FillValue. I found out about the NC4 NC_STRING thing that looks like a fix by searching online and reading some of your earlier comments on this ticket.
Working link for files:
https://gamma.hdfgroup.org/ftp/pub/outgoing/ymuqun/myopendap/Hyrax-397/
NetCDF-3 there is no string type, only a char array type, so the fill value should be just one character, not an array of characters. For this reason has been decided for FillValue attribute to use just first character from original value and to add additional string attribute Orig_FillValue with original value of _FillValue.
I’ll mark this as done. The HK-23 branch has been merged to master.
