[netcdf-java] Human readable time in ncdump (was: Re: Storm tracks as trajectories)

Hi Russ,
I find the varying precision of the time strings a bit distracting and was wondering if it would make sense to set the precision for the entire array. Or another option would be to match the precision of the time strings to that given in the file. In this case, out to the second: 


                time:units = "days since 1858-11-17 00:00:00" ;
I think part of the problem is that when I see a date string I don't necessarily think of it as a point in time but rather a range. So, when I see "2005-08-19" I think of the whole 24 hour period rather than just the start of that day. 

Ethan

Russ Rew wrote:

[...]  The current netCDF snapshot distribution supports a
"-t" option that displays times in a human readable ISO-8601 form, so if
you run "ncdump -t" on the netCDF file corresponding to the CDL you've
given, the output for the time variable is:
time = "2005-08-18 18", "2005-08-19", "2005-08-19 06", "2005-08-19 12", "2005-08-19 18", "2005-08-20", "2005-08-20 06", "2005-08-20 12", "2005-08-20 18", "2005-08-21", "2005-08-21 06", "2005-08-21 12", "2005-08-21 18", "2005-08-22", "2005-08-22 06", "2005-08-22 12", "2005-08-22 18", "2005-08-23", "2005-08-23 06", "2005-08-23 12", "2005-08-23 18", "2005-08-24", "2005-08-24 06", "2005-08-24 12", "2005-08-24 18", "2005-08-25", "2005-08-25 06", "2005-08-25 12", "2005-08-25 18", "2005-08-26", "2005-08-26 06", "2005-08-26 12", "2005-08-26 18", "2005-08-27", "2005-08-21 12", "2005-08-21 18", "2005-08-22", "2005-08-22 06", "2005-08-22 12" ; 

instead of


 time = 53601.75, 53602, 53602.25, 53602.5, 53602.75, 53603, 53603.25,
    53603.5, 53603.75, 53604, 53604.25, 53604.5, 53604.75, 53605, 53605.25,
    53605.5, 53605.75, 53606, 53606.25, 53606.5, 53606.75, 53607, 53607.25,
    53607.5, 53607.75, 53608, 53608.25, 53608.5, 53608.75, 53609, 53609.25,
    53609.5, 53609.75, 53610, 53604.5, 53604.75, 53605, 53605.25, 53605.5 ;



        float time(record) ;
                time:long_name = "Modified Julian Day" ;
                time:units = "days since 1858-11-17 00:00:00" ;


--
Ethan R. Davis                                Telephone: (303) 497-8155
Software Engineer                             Fax:       (303) 497-8690
UCAR Unidata Program Center                   E-mail:    edavis@xxxxxxxx
P.O. Box 3000
Boulder, CO  80307-3000                       http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/
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