Information Programs

File Name Information Program

The wxpfile program is used to determine information on various files. This program has several modes that is helpful for loops and overlays as well as general information. This program has several modes:

• File name generation: This program can generate ingested and converted data file names along with the full path specification based on the tags in the name convention file. Also, wxpfile can generate the next or previous file in the sequence. This is handy since -cu=5,-cu=4 may not give consecutive hours if the hour changes between runs. With this option, specifying the 14 GMT file as input will give the 15 GMT file as output. This also works for upper air data. It will also generate header file names.
• Sequence numbers: Sequence numbers are a generic way of representing time (yyyymmddhh). This program will create sequence numbers based on a specific file. This is handy in identifying the time used in each image of the loop without having to rely on file naming conventions. With the sequence number known, this can be feed back into a WXP program for overlay purposes.
• Time differences: The program will compute time differences. This is handy if a loop needs to be updated. Inquire the sequence number of the last image in the loop and feed it to wxpfile. The difference between that image and current will be returned in hours. Then a script can just loop through that many images to update the loop with current data.
• Date/time strings: This program can be used to generate date/time strings for use in scripts and titling images in the loop. This string is derived from date and time of an existing file based on file type.
• Date/time/forecast strings: Wxpfile can be used to generate forecast date strings used by grbcalc. For example:

   3 day MRF valid 12Z 15 DEC 97
   18 hour NGM valid 6Z 13 DEC 97
   WXP analysis for 12Z 12 DEC 97

This combined with mapplt can be used to annotate images where the text labeling has been turned off.

• File existence: This program can test for file existence
• File size: This program will list file sizes
• File deletion: This program will delete specific files based on file type and time offset.

Resource Determination Program

Another handy program is wxpdef that can be used to inquire resources saved in the resource file. This can be used if the values for a particular program name are not known or if values from a different program name are needed. For example:

wxpdef .data_path 
/home/wxp/data

Also this may be used to get resource values not normally used by WXP but set in the file. For example, the resource file may contain an image_path resource that specifies location of GIF files.  The wxpdef program may inquire these values.

City Name Determination Program

This program called wxpcity is useful for getting information about cities, counties, forecast zones and states.   The input files to wxpcity are WXP raw files and thus can be plotted with mapplt.  Individual columns from the file can be obtained.  The information saved in these files include:

• location
• size
• WMO and ICAO ids
• zone and FIPS ids
• controlling WFO for public and state forecasts and warning

wxpcity Indianapolis
Indianapolis 39.73 -86.27 KIND 72438 IN 097 047 KIND KIND KIND KIND 53 63 73 -5N

For further information about WXP, email technical-support@weather.unisys.com
Last updated by Dan Vietor on June 8, 1998