[gradsusr] plotting long variable names

[Ricardo Hallak]

Hi Don,

have you already tried to change the names (example: MXUPHL50002000m for
MXUPHL5000_2000m)? After that you have to run gribmap again. It seems that
grads doesn't accept underscores in var names. 

Hope this helps,
Ricardo

On Sat, 10 Nov 2012 02:10:39 -0500, Donald Van Dyke wrote
> All,
> 
> I've run into some trouble trying to plot variables with very long 
> names from NCEP.  I updated to the recent GrADS 2.0.2, wgrib2, and 
> g2ctl releases with no further success.  Specifically, I'm trying to 
> plot certain max variables from the hi-res NCEP NAM nest as well as 
> some other NCEP hi-res models (ARW and NMM).  As an example, I've 
> attached the control file that g2ctl produces from a NAM nest grib2 
> file.  Note some of the very long variable names such as 
> MXUPHL5000_2000m.  Unfortunately, I'm interested in plotting some of 
> those, and it doesn't work.  If I run a simple script such as
> 
> 'reinit'
> 'open namnest.ctl'
> 'set gxout shaded'
> 'd MXUPHL5000_2000m'
> 'printim test.png'
> 
> 'quit'
> 
> I get an error that says
> 
> Syntax Error:  Invalid Operand
>    'mxuphl5000_2000m' not a variable or function name
>    Error ocurred at column 1
> DISPLAY error:  Invalid expression
>    Expression = mxuphl5000_2000m
> No hardcopy metafile open
> GX package terminated
> 
> Is there an easy solution to this?  Ideally, I'd like to either see 
> GrADS be able to read these long variable names, or NCEP use shorter 
> names.  I suppose it is possible to trick it into working by using 
> wgrib2 to rename the variables I want to plot into something shorter 
> that GrADS can read and writing those to a new grib2 file, but that 
> seems like a lot of needless work and trickery.  Am I missing 
> something here?  Thanks for any help anyone can give.
> 
> -Don