20050124: Problem with PATH command (cont.)

>From: "Owen Cooper" <address@hidden>
>Organization: Aeronomy Laboratory/NOAA
>Keywords: 200501220019.j0M0JSv2021017 McIDAS PATH web

Hi Owen,

>Thank you for getting back to me so quickly

No worries.

>here is my MCPATH
>
>mustang:[78]% echo $MCPATH
>/home/ocooper/mcidas/gribdec:/home/ocooper/mcidas/data:/home/mcidas/linux/data
> :/home/mcidas/linux/help

McIDAS' strategy is to write output in the first writable directory in
the user's MCPATH unless the file being written matches a regular expression
in the user's REDIRECTion table.  The MCPATH rules can lead to unexpected
consequences when there is more than one file of the same name in different
directories in MCPATH.  For instance, if the file is found in a any MCPATH
directory that is not writable, or if the file is not writable, then
writing of the file will fail.  If the first instance of the file (when
there are multiple files of the same name in different MCPATH directories)
is writable, and the action causes the file to be deleted and recreated,
then the first file will be deleted and the second will be written _if_
it is writable (i.e., is in a directory that is writable and/or is writable
itself).  If the second file is not writable, then there will be a failure
that is hard to understand.

>the gribdec entry is so that I can decode GFS grib files into mcidas grid form
> at.

Got it.

>I've noticed that if I forget to set my REDIRECT at the beginning of my mcidas
>session it defaults to looking for (and writing) everything in /home/ocooper/m
> cidas/gribdec,
>instead of /home/ocooper/mcidas/data

This is because of your MCPATH including the /home/ocooper/mcidas/gribdec
as its first directory.

>Do I just need to rearrange the order of my MCPATH entries?

Perhaps.  It would certainly be a quick thing to check.

Cheers,

Tom
--
NOTE: All email exchanges with Unidata User Support are recorded in the
Unidata inquiry tracking system and then made publicly available
through the web.  If you do not want to have your interactions made
available in this way, you must let us know in each email you send to us.

>From address@hidden  Mon Jan 24 11:01:09 2005

HI Tom
I rearragned my MCPATH but that didn't help. So I copied my old PATHFILE 
to a different  name so that when I next ran  the PATH command it would 
have to create a new  PATHFILE. This worked, so perhaps my old PATHFILE 
became corrupt. I had created a lot of PATHs over the past year so that 
I could plot hundreds of trajectory particles on satellite images, 
making nice particle transport movies. My old PATHFILE was nearly 10 Mb 
so maybe the fiel exceeded its size limit?
Thanks for your help
Owen