[ncl-talk] Remove white-spaces from write_table output

[Mary Haley]

We could certainly do that, but the format string was set up to allow you
to enter text in additional to format strings, for example:

 i = ispan( 95,105, 1)
 j = ispan(905,1005,10)

 write_table("example4.txt","w",[/i,j/],"first_%05i second_%05i")

which gives you:

first_00095 second_00905
first_00096 second_00915
. . .

Like you said, we would have to choose which special character could be
used.  I suppose in the case of write_table, you could use setfileoption to
set or change the special character.

--Mary




On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 2:31 PM, David Brown <dbrown at ucar.edu> wrote:

> I am wondering if we could provide a special formatting character that
> could be part of the format string, maybe at the beginning, and would
> signal that no automatic separator character be used. Of course which
> character to use might be an issue, but hopefully that could be
> solved.
>  -dave
>
> On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 2:12 PM, Dennis Shea <shea at ucar.edu> wrote:
> > Fortran (some other languages too!) has the capability to provide user
> > specified granularity in parsing strings of numbers and characters.
> >
> > fortran:   format(i2,5i5)
> >               2999999999999999999999999999999
> >
> > The problem is someone must tell you the structure. You could read as
> > follows:
> >               format(i2,i2,i3,i5,i4,i1,.......)
> >
> > However, any 'automatic' software must have some separator between the
> > numbers.
> >
> > --
> > NCDC has text files the include letters, numbers, periods (76.5) all
> > together.
> >
> > ====
> > fortran:   format(i2,5(1x,i5))
> >               2 99999 99999 99999 99999 99999 99999
> >
> > Just a comment
> > D
> >
> > On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 12:02 PM, Rabah Hachelaf <hachelaf at sca.uqam.ca>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi Mary and Karin,
> >>
> >> Adding white-spaces by default is a limitation if we need to write some
> >> data using a FORTRAN format.
> >> We could bypass this "issue" by removing one character starting from the
> >> 2nd variable but we would have liked to keep the same format between
> FORTRAN
> >> and NCL
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >>
> >> Rabah
> >>
> >> 2017-08-10 13:15 GMT-04:00 Mary Haley <haley at ucar.edu>:
> >>>
> >>> Hi Rabah,
> >>>
> >>> I see Karin already responded, and had the same response I was just
> about
> >>> to send!
> >>>
> >>> I'll go ahead and include my response here. I've updated the
> >>> documentation to indicate this behavior, and also created a ticket
> just in
> >>> case.
> >>>
> >>> Unfortunately, I think this is a "feature" of write_table. Even if
> >>> there's a case for declaring this a bug, we probably couldn't change
> the
> >>> behavior because we'd likely break a bunch of existing scripts that
> depend
> >>> on the space being there.
> >>>
> >>> I created a ticket on this (NCL-2646), in case it's an issue for other
> >>> users.
> >>>
> >>> Meanwhile, as Karin pointed out, I think the only way around this is to
> >>> concatenate the strings yourself:
> >>>
> >>> int1 = 2
> >>> int2 = "99999"
> >>> int3 = "99999"
> >>> int4 = "99999"
> >>> int5 = "99999"
> >>> int6 = "99999"
> >>> int7 = "99999"
> >>> int_cat = int2+int3+int4+int5+int6+int7
> >>> sounding_check = [/int1,int_cat/]
> >>> write_table(outfile,"w",sounding_check,"%2i%s")
> >>>
> >>> In general, I would caution against writing numbers to a file without
> any
> >>> spaces, because this makes it potentially very difficult for somebody
> else
> >>> looking at the file to know how to read it.  However, I do understand
> that
> >>> some of these files have historically been written this way for other
> >>> purposes
> >>>
> >>> --Mary
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 3:13 PM, Rabah Hachelaf <hachelaf at sca.uqam.ca>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Hello,
> >>>> I am wounding why there is a systematic white-spaces between values
> >>>> although they are removed from the format specifier.
> >>>> How can i remove white spaces from in this case.
> >>>>
> >>>> Thank you
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> begin
> >>>> outfile = "test.txt"
> >>>> sounding_check = [/2,"99999","99999","99999","
> 99999","99999","99999"/]
> >>>> write_table(outfile,"a",sounding_check,"%2i%s%s%s%s%s%s")
> >>>>
> >>>> end
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> output :
> >>>>  2 99999 99999 99999 99999 99999 99999
> >>>> --
> >>>> ------------------------------
> >>>> Best regards,
> >>>> Rabah Hachelaf
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> ncl-talk mailing list
> >>>> ncl-talk at ucar.edu
> >>>> List instructions, subscriber options, unsubscribe:
> >>>> http://mailman.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/ncl-talk
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> ------------------------------
> >> Cordialement,
> >> Best regards,
> >> Rabah Hachelaf
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> ncl-talk at ucar.edu
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> >>
> >
> >
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