Ascii Observation Format

Diana supports an observation file format used internally at Met Norway which is referred to as “ascii” format. Most users will not need to handle files in this format, but we provide a description of the format below for those who may need to convert ascii files to other formats, such as BUFR.

The description below is currently incomplete.

Ascii files contain a number of declarations, each of which consists of a pair of square brackets containing a title and a set of arguments in the following form:

[<title> <argument> ...]

For example:

[COLUMNS Date:d Time:t Lon:r Lat:r]

Diana understands declarations with the following titles:

• COLUMNS describes the data provided in the file as a sequence of columns.
• DATA appears without arguments. The data itself follows the declaration on the lines immediately after it, and is given as a sequence of values corresponding to the columns described by the COLUMNS declaration.
• SEPARATOR defines the separator that will be used to parse the columns of data in the DATA section.
• UNDEFINED defines strings that will be interpreted as undefined values.
• LABEL
• SKIP_DATA_LINES

Other declarations may appear in files, but are not understood by Diana:

• NAME