Support from reading unformatted Fortran files
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- Dominant language
- Python
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Description
I was wondering if there is interest in developing support for reading unformatted binary files into DataArrays/Datasets.
I have been using a couple of models for a while that output unformatted Fortran binary files that I have to read into DataArrays and Datasets. I have developed my own custom functions to do this and they work quite well for my purposes, but I was wondering is the community thinks this is something that would be useful for more people. I know the syntax could be a bit cumbersome, but I was thinking it could be implemented like
da = xr.DataArray.from_binary(filename, access="direct", dtype=np.float64, coords=coords, dims=dims,)
From there we could figure out the counts to read, etc. If there's interest in this feature we could discuss it and I'd be happy to implement.
Cheers
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
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Research direction
Start by reviewing the proposed DataArray.from_binary API and the existing DataArray/Dataset input and construction paths. Determine the supported Fortran unformatted access modes, dtype handling, dimensions, coordinates, and record counts, then define tests showing that the resulting DataArrays and Datasets contain the expected values.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- fortran, numpy, python
- Domain
- data
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Needs clarification
- Newbie friendliness
- 25/100