Program M3FAKE

Usage

    setenv  <outfile>     <path name>
    m3fake
    <and respond to the prompts>

where outfile is the logical name of the output file.

Summary

The M3FAKE program prompts the user, one item at a time, for the contents of a file description including starting date and time, time step and number of steps, and for choice of formula to be used for the fill values. The program then builds a file according to these specifications. In order to describe the horizontal coordinate system and grid, the user may either supply the name of the horizontal grid, as found in the GRIDDESC file, or else may supply all parameters in a complete description of the grid and coordinate system, entry by entry.

Currently, only the following file types are supported:

The following formulas are currently available, on a per-variable basis:

column number
row number
level number
time step number
user-specified fill value
data from a user-specified ASCII file. This file should be a list-directed (e.g., comma-delimited) ASCII file containing all of the desired input data to be copied into the output file, ordered and formatted as follows:
- The fastest subscript should be grid-column
- There should be a line-break after each column
- The next-fastest subscript should be grid-row
- The third-fastest subscript should be grid-layer (if the number of layers is more than 1)
- The slowest subscript should be time-step, if the file is time-stepped.

Before you run the program, you need to assign a logical name to the physical file names of the output file, according to Models-3 conventions, using the operation(s)

        setenv GRIDDESC  <pathname>
        setenv <lname>   <pname>

The program will prompt you for the logical name you have chosen for the output file, and for its description, including the names, types, units, descriptions, and formulas or input files, for all the variables. The prompts will have default responses which can be accepted by hitting <RETURN>. The specification ofstarting date and time, and duration for the file specification follow Models-3 date and time conventions.

Note that the set of specifications for which files can be constructed by one execution of M3FAKE is quite complex, being dependent upon the file type, variables and other structures in the file being constructed. If you want to run this program in batch mode (i.e., from a script), the recommended way to develop the script is to run the program once interactively while noting the pattern of responses to prompts which generate the particular analysis you want. The pattern of responses then becomes either a command-output file which is redirected into the program's execution by the script, or becomes a "here-document" fed into the execution.

Source code for program m3fakeis available under the GNU GPL License, Version 2, and can be downloaded here from CMAS or here from GitHub..

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