[Difx-users] difx2mark4 bug {External}

[Leonid Petrov]

Geff et al,

   There is number of other instances  when we deal with station
codes in both schedule preparation, schedule validation, data
analysis, etc. And everywhere we compare station names. I would
like to agree upon on a convention for  the station name case.
One convention will be considered standard, all other non-standard.
Then we can gradually examine code and replace non-standard treatment
with standard. If you remember time when FORTRAN (with all capital
letters) did not understand small letters, you may remember time when
there was a mess between RCP and LCP conventions. Then a IEEE
convention has been established and folks can say: our receiver gets
RCP defined in accordance with the IEEE conventions. I want to have the
same convention here. Then we can tell we use station code according
to the DiFX convention.

Leonid
2024.02.14_12:03:55


> On 2024-02-14 10:43, Geoffrey B. Crew via Difx-users wrote:
> I knew I was opening a can of worms on this one.  As a relative
> new-comer I was bit by this sort of thing a few times...and just
> assumed I was the only one confused.  Now I understand:
> 
> Fortran did not have good string handling and the (original) character
> set was limited; hence capitalization in AIPS.  VEX came later,
> particularly after K&R decided character (string) handling was
> something that needed to be fixed in C and there is no fixed
> convention other than Vex can handle mixed case and AIPS cannot.
> 
> With arrays such as SKA, ngVLA, &c under discussion, it seems that
> perhaps 2 characters are not enough and some guidance within the DiFX
> code base on "what is the plan" might not be a bad idea so that the
> developers can move into some coherence in the future.
> 
> And if AIPS is to survive into that era, some sort of mapping of
> station codes into all-upper-case two letter codes might eventually be
> necessary.  difx2mark4 already has an option to provide a map of
> two-letter codes to one letter codes.  (And we already decided HOPS4
> isn't going care and will use what is in the VEX.)
> Somewhat earlier Leonid wrote:
> 
>>> Dear colleagues,
>>> 
>>> Can you clarify, is there a convention on a case of two-letter
>>> station
>>> codes:
>>> gs, GS, or Gs?
> 
> --
> Geoff Crew
> MIT Haystack Observatory
> gbc at mit.edu
> (NOTE NEW EMAIL: gbc at haystack is no longer reliable)
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