html_url,issue_url,id,node_id,user,created_at,updated_at,author_association,body,reactions,performed_via_github_app,issue
https://github.com/pydata/xarray/pull/7862#issuecomment-1573764660,https://api.github.com/repos/pydata/xarray/issues/7862,1573764660,IC_kwDOAMm_X85dzb40,85085,2023-06-02T13:44:43Z,2023-06-02T13:44:43Z,CONTRIBUTOR,"@kmuehlbauer thanks for adding tests! I'm not sure what the mypy error is either, I'm afraid...","{""total_count"": 0, ""+1"": 0, ""-1"": 0, ""laugh"": 0, ""hooray"": 0, ""confused"": 0, ""heart"": 0, ""rocket"": 0, ""eyes"": 0}",,1720045908
https://github.com/pydata/xarray/pull/7862#issuecomment-1561308333,https://api.github.com/repos/pydata/xarray/issues/7862,1561308333,IC_kwDOAMm_X85dD6yt,85085,2023-05-24T14:51:23Z,2023-05-24T14:51:23Z,CONTRIBUTOR,"> So it looks like the changes here with the fix in my branch will get your issue resolved @tomwhite, right?

Yes - thanks!

> I'm a bit worried, that this might break other users workflows, if they depend on the current conversion to floating point for some reason.

The floating point default is preserved if you do e.g. `xr.Dataset({""a"": np.array([], dtype=object)})`. The change here will only convert to string if there is extra metadata present that says it is a string.","{""total_count"": 1, ""+1"": 1, ""-1"": 0, ""laugh"": 0, ""hooray"": 0, ""confused"": 0, ""heart"": 0, ""rocket"": 0, ""eyes"": 0}",,1720045908
https://github.com/pydata/xarray/pull/7862#issuecomment-1561240314,https://api.github.com/repos/pydata/xarray/issues/7862,1561240314,IC_kwDOAMm_X85dDqL6,85085,2023-05-24T14:12:49Z,2023-05-24T14:12:49Z,CONTRIBUTOR,"> Could you verify the above example, please?

The code looks fine, and I get the same result when I run it with this PR.

Your fix in https://github.com/kmuehlbauer/xarray/tree/preserve-vlen-string-dtype changes the metadata so it is correctly preserved as `metadata: {'element_type': <class 'str'>}`.

I feel less qualified to evaluate the impact of the netcdf4 fix.

","{""total_count"": 1, ""+1"": 1, ""-1"": 0, ""laugh"": 0, ""hooray"": 0, ""confused"": 0, ""heart"": 0, ""rocket"": 0, ""eyes"": 0}",,1720045908
https://github.com/pydata/xarray/pull/7862#issuecomment-1561143111,https://api.github.com/repos/pydata/xarray/issues/7862,1561143111,IC_kwDOAMm_X85dDSdH,85085,2023-05-24T13:23:18Z,2023-05-24T13:23:18Z,CONTRIBUTOR,"Thanks for taking a look @kmuehlbauer and for the useful example code. I hadn't considered the netcdf cases, so thanks for pointing those out.

> Engine `netcdf4` does not roundtrip here, losing the dtype metadata information. There is special casing for h5netcdf backend, though.

Could netcdf4 do the same special-casing as h5netcdf?

","{""total_count"": 0, ""+1"": 0, ""-1"": 0, ""laugh"": 0, ""hooray"": 0, ""confused"": 0, ""heart"": 0, ""rocket"": 0, ""eyes"": 0}",,1720045908