Hi Roy:

Thanks for clarifying. I was thinking of the "internet profile" at

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3339

John


On 10/20/2010 7:40 AM, Lowry, Roy K wrote:
Hi John,

ISO-8601 allows timestamps to any resolution from year to millisecond, so 2010, 
2010-10, 2010-10-20 are all valid so the string can be any length from 4 to 27
(e.g. 2010-10-20T14:53:00.000Z-15), unless restricted through an 8601 profile 
(as many communities do)

Cheers, Roy.



-----Original Message-----
From: cf-metadata-boun...@cgd.ucar.edu 
[mailto:cf-metadata-boun...@cgd.ucar.edu] On Behalf Of John Caron
Sent: 20 October 2010 13:36
To: cf-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu
Subject: Re: [CF-metadata] New standard names for satellite obs data

On 10/19/2010 12:55 PM, Mike Grant wrote:
On 19/10/10 14:21, Aleksandar Jelenak wrote:
Actually, I don't think it is possible to use 'time' standard name in
such cases. If I correctly interpret CF rules for using standard names,
'time' data can be only in the physically-equivalent units to "seconds".
Strings, being dimensionless, do not qualify.

Out of curiosity, why do you want to store time as strings?  It's easy
to create those strings from numerical values, and numerical values are
easier to handle in code (and in netcdf-3, as Seth said).

Cheers,

Mike.

I made a proposal a few years ago to allow ISO-8601 time strings to be an allowable form 
of time coordinates, which was not accepted. I would be interested to hear what your 
reasons are to use this form vs udunits (eg "secs since reference")? ISO-8601 
time strings are fixed length (21 I think?) so handling in netcdf-3 is not so hard.

Your proposal would amount to standardizing how to include ISO-8601 time 
strings, but the standard udunits time coordinate would still be required.

Clarification of your purpose might clarify the name. At first glance, I might prefer 
"time_iso8601" over "time_label_iso8601".

John
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