Support variable-length strings
Nobody has claimed this yet.
Assessment
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Newbie friendliness
- 52/100
Research direction
Start with the Iris netCDF load and save paths around cf_var.dtype handling and default fill-value selection, after #6911 and ncdata#223 are resolved. Trace how variable-length string arrays are represented on load and write, then verify that both operations support them without the dtype or fill-value failures described here.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Description
As noted in ncdata#223, we can't easily load or save variable-length string arrays, but this has become quite desirable
- we already implemented a recommended user-triggered workaround mechanism
- they are valid CF ("A text string can be stored either in a variable-length string or in a fixed-length char array")
- they are handled by netCDF4, where the variable has a dtype of 'str' (or on write, a 'Sxx' other than 'S1')
- (a) on Iris load, they hit a glitch whereby the
cf_var.dtypeis not annp.dtype, so has no.itemsize - (b) on save they fail in a similar way, as it fails to get a default fill-value
Ideally we would just have special code to support this 'exception' type in load + save.
It should definitely wait until after #6911 though.
I would hope to return to this after fixing https://github.com/SciTools/ncdata/pull/223
- Dominant language
- Python
- Stars
- 724
- Forks
- 317
- Avg merge
- 3d 20h
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 9
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
More from SciTools/iris
-
Difficulty 2/5 1-3 hours Newbie friendliness 65/100
-
Difficulty 1/5 Under an hour Newbie friendliness 78/100
-
Difficulty 2/5 1-3 hours Newbie friendliness 78/100
-
Difficulty 2/5 1-3 hours Newbie friendliness 84/100
-
Difficulty 2/5 1-3 hours Newbie friendliness 62/100
Similar issues
-
Difficulty 2/5 1-3 hours Newbie friendliness 74/100
bancolombia/sentinel#23 ·
-
test md OpenCI
Difficulty 2/5 1-3 hours Newbie friendliness 74/100
-
integration:quickjs org:external priority:backlog topic:code-interpreter topic:middleware type:feature
Difficulty 2/5 1-3 hours Newbie friendliness 74/100
langchain-ai/deepagents#6450 ·
-
bug client
Difficulty 2/5 1-3 hours Newbie friendliness 88/100
-
Difficulty 2/5 1-3 hours Newbie friendliness 74/100