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Slightly Amend Zarr Encoding Specification Doc #8749

Open eshort0401 opened this issue 2 months ago • 0 comments

  • [x] Closes #8749
  • [x] User visible changes (including notable bug fixes) are documented in whats-new.rst

Slight documentation amendments following discussion in #8749 and #11006.

  • I add a few lines to communicate that Xarray checks all three supported conventions; first Zarr v3, then Xarray flavoured Zarr v2, and finally NCZarr, raising an error if no dimension names are found.
  • I make a few additional word choice edits for consistency and clarity, e.g. replace "Zarr arrays" with "Zarr groups" in the "Compatibility and Reading" section.
  • I have also added an additional code comment to xarray.backends.zarr._get_zarr_dims_and_attrs providing the link to the (very helpful) Xarray encoding specification - I missed this document when I first looked at this code!

Additional Notes

  • Discussion with @TomNicholas in #8749 mentions improving the error message given when dimension name metadata is missing, but this was implemented in #10025.
  • An idea was also floated that Xarray could use default dimension names when metadata is missing, but this cannot be done unambiguously when multiple arrays are in the Zarr group, so I would consider now closing #8749.

eshort0401 avatar Dec 13 '25 23:12 eshort0401