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10.3.2 Variable Summaries

The name of each variable summary file (list file) output by checkvar is of the form variable.lst for numeric variables and variable.cst for character variables. The data in *.lst, and *.cst files can be loaded into histogram plot programs for graphical representation. (You must be familiar enough with your program of choice to manipulate the data as necessary in order to achieve the desired result.) In Unix, there is no need to abbreviate the base file name.

NOTE: If you use the -v option, the order of variables in var_file has

no effect on the numbering of base file names of the variable summary files.

The two example variable summary files, latitude.lst and longitude.lst, are shown next.

latitude.lst
-83.224  1
-69.274  1
-65.865  1
-63.212  1
-63.003  1
-47.304  1
-34.578  1
-28.287  1
-12.967  1
 -0.929  1
 11.624  1
 12.588  1
 27.331  1
 29.918  1
 35.086  1
 35.130  1
 38.818  1
 54.118  1
 77.652  1
 77.883  1 
longitude.lst
-176.162  1
-155.234  1
-153.544  1
-136.941  1
-113.661  1
 -79.178  1
 -77.506  1
 -55.442  1
 -21.644  1
   0.777  1
  30.172  1
  35.591  1
  36.356  1
  38.875  1
  55.319  1
  62.152  1
  91.411  1
 134.124  1
 144.804  1
 149.408  1

The variable summary files consist of two columns. The first indicates boundary values for data bins and the second gives the number of data points in each bin. Because a precision of 3 was specified in the example, each boundary value has three decimal places. The boundary values are determined dynamically by checkvar and often do not correspond to data values in the input file, even if the checkvar and data file precisions are the same.

The first data bin in latitude.lst contains data points in the range -83.224 (inclusive) to -69.274 (exclusive); neither boundary number exists in latlon.dat. The first bin has one data point, -83.223548. The fourth data bin contains latitude values from -63.212 (inclusive) to -63.003 (exclusive), again with neither boundary value occurring in the data file. The data point in the fourth bin is -63.211962.


Tom Sgouros and James Gallagher, 2006-02-12

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