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[netCDF #YHC-662367]: nc_inq_grpname documentation bugs

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  • Subject: [netCDF #YHC-662367]: nc_inq_grpname documentation bugs
  • Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2008 05:39:45 -0600
> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to understand how netcdf-4 works by consulting the
> documentation, but there seem to be some places where it's at odds with
> what the library actually does.

Whoops! Sorry about that!

>
> For example, I'm working on groups at the moment.  The documentation for
> nc_inq_grpname_len says that the name of the root group is "/", but the
> documentation for nc_inq_grpname says that the name of the root group is
> "".  The library itself seems to return "/", so presumably the
> documentation for nc_inq_grpname is mistaken in this.  (By the way,
> nc_inq_grpname_len returns a length of 1 for the length of the root group
> name, but nc_inq_grpname touches 2 entries of the character array it is
> passed, since it appends a NULL character.  That's not entirely unexpected
> for a C programmer, but I think it's worth a mention in the documentation
> that the length returned by nc_inq_grpname_len is not as long as the
> string affected by nc_inq_grpname.)
>
> Another issue is that nc_inq_grpname clearly says that it returns what you
> might call the "fully qualified" group name, i.e.,
> "group1/subgrp1/subsubgrp1", but when I run test programs I find that it
> does *not* return the full path of the group, instead it just returns the
> name of the leaf node.  So either the routine or the documentation is
> wrong on that, but I'm not sure which it is.
>
> Lastly, and this is obviously related to the above, in the documentation
> for nc_inq_grpname, the fully qualified group name is not indicated as
> starting with a forward slash, although the root group's name appears to
> be "/".  I'm hoping that, to be consistent, a fully qualified group name
> will have the form of "/group1/subgroup1" and not "group1/subgroup1".
>
> Regards,
>
> --Dave
>

Thanks for pointing out these documentation errors! I am working on getting
this fixed and will let you know when the new version is ready in the daily
snapshot...

Thanks!

Ed

Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: YHC-662367
Department: Support netCDF
Priority: High
Status: Open