netCDF
4.2.1.1
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The names of dimensions, variables and attributes (and, in netCDF-4 files, groups, user-defined types, compound member names, and enumeration symbols) consist of arbitrary sequences of alphanumeric characters, underscore '_', period '.', plus '+', hyphen '-', or at sign '@', but beginning with an alphanumeric character or underscore. However names commencing with underscore are reserved for system use.
Beginning with versions 3.6.3 and 4.0, names may also include UTF-8 encoded Unicode characters as well as other special characters, except for the character '/', which may not appear in a name.
Names that have trailing space characters are also not permitted.
Case is significant in netCDF names.
A zero-length name is not allowed.
Names longer than NC_MAX_NAME will not be accepted any netCDF define function. An error of NC_EMAXNAME will be returned.
All netCDF inquiry functions will return names of maximum size NC_MAX_NAME for netCDF files. Since this does not include the terminating NULL, space should be reserved for NC_MAX_NAME + 1 characters.
Some widely used conventions restrict names to only alphanumeric characters or underscores.