20000502: sfcfil

Darrell,

There is a 132 character line length limit for sfedit which you 
will probably exceed by placing all 18 values on a single line.
SFEDIT will look on multiple lines to get all the data values it
is expecting, so you are correct that it is grabbing values from the 
next line in the file. By placing line breaks in your output format, 
you should be able to solve your problem.

Steve Chiswell
Unidata User Support



On Sun, 30 Apr 2000, Darrell Ensley wrote:

> Hi, Gembuds--
> 
> Ok, here it is:
> 
> I'm creating surface files using SFCFIL and filling them 
> using SFEDIT with data from regular sequential ascii 
> text files...sounds easy enough...should be.
> 
> Then I used SFLIST to see if my data made it into the 
> Gempak sffile correctly. 
> 
> This is an example of data that went into the GEMPAK sfc file:
> (NOTE: the input data has 18 parms on one line per station,
>       but i broke it down into 3 lines for comparison here.)
> 
>     STN  YYMMDD/HHMM      PMSL     ALTI     TMPF     DWPF     SKNT     DRCT
>                           GUST     WNUM     CHC1     CHC2     CHC3     VSBY
>                           PT03     P03I     HSUN     SNOW     TMPX     P24I
>     ABY    930312/1200   1017.70    30.06    47.00    37.00    10.00    30.00
>                         -9999.00     0.00   602.00  1103.00 -9999.00     7.00
>                             0.00 -9999.00 -9999.00 -9999.00    47.00 -9999.00
> 
> This is what comes out of the sfc file using SFLIST:
> 
>     STN  YYMMDD/HHMM      PMSL     ALTI     TMPF     DWPF     SKNT     DRCT
>                           GUST     WNUM     CHC1     CHC2     CHC3     VSBY
>                           PT03     P03I     HSUN     SNOW     TMPX     P24I
>     ABY    930312/1200   1017.70    30.06    47.00    37.00    10.00    30.00
>                         -9999.00     0.00   602.00  1103.00 -9999.00     7.00
>                         -9999.00 ********  1200.00  1017.20    30.04    48.00
> 
>                                                                               
>   
> The first 12 are fine but the last 6 are obviously wrong and seem to be have 
> been tried to be read in from the *NEXT* line in the input text file.
> 
> My input data file has all 18 parameters for each station on 1 line per 
> station,
> whereas SFLIST always breaks it down with 6 per line.
> 
> That leads me to the question: Does GEMPAK (SFEDIT) have a limit on the 
> number 
> of parms it can read in on one line (12 or 13, for example) before it starts 
> reading in from the next line in the input file? So that I need to break down 
> my input data into 2 or 3 lines per station, exactly how it comes out in 
> SFLIST,
> perhaps?
> 
> Is that my problem? It shouldn't be that I have too many PARMs (18), because 
> I've seen other sffiles and packing files with more than that.
>  
> I'm not sure what I need to do. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions to 
> enlighten my troubled mind about what should be an elementary procedure?
> 
> At this point, I think I need to reformat my input data back in my fortran 
> code 
> that writes the data out to the text file in the first place, but I'm not 
> sure 
> if it could be that, something else, or a combination of things...
> 
> Thanks in advance!
> 
> Darrell Ensley
> 
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Darrell Bryan Ensley         <address@hidden>      
> Mesoscale Dynamics Lab          5703 Windlestraw Dr.
> Rm 135, Research III            Apartment 37
> North Carolina State Univ.      Durham, NC 27713
> W: (919) 515-1437               H: (919) 361-1346  
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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