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Hi Bruce, Sorry it has taken so long to respond to your question. The C user's guide for netCDF is out-of-date with respect to what characters are valid in names, at least in the description of names used in arguments for the API functions dealing with attributes. Characters such as ":" are permitted in netCDF attribute names in versions 3.6.3 and later, as described in the part of the netCDF users guide that documents the file format: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/netcdf/docs/netcdf.html#NetCDF-Classic-Format Thanks for pointing out the discrepancy in the documentation. I will fix that in the next release. There is another issue you will encounter: the proposed convention for point observations is not yet approved for CF. CF still only permits alphanumeric names with the addition of the underscore '_' character, so that restriction will also have to be lifted before the point observation conventions in their current form, with ':' used in names, are approved. But I expect that not to be a contentious issue. --Russ Russ Rew UCAR Unidata Program address@hidden http://www.unidata.ucar.edu Ticket Details =================== Ticket ID: YUI-809780 Department: Support netCDF Priority: Normal Status: Closed