ascii data

[Michael Notaro]

Hello.  I have a basic grads question.  How can I read
ascii formatted data into grads.  For example, if I have
a file, research.dat, which looks like:

1900 -1.02  3.40  -3.11
1901  2.23  4.56  -4.00
1902 etc...

How do I read this in grads? I want the second column to
be variable1, the third column to be variable2, etc, and
each are a function of time only.

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Another question.  If I have a netcdf file with data
for variable(time), I get an error regarding the
absence of a discernable X coordinate.  I created this
data in NCL.  What is needed to allow grads to open it?

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Thanks,
Mike