issue_comments: 1069073130

@DWesl Thanks for digging into the details of the CF! I read your post in the sense that solution (1) is the one to choose.

I have one more question though before we close this:

When setting "coordinates" as a variable attribute instead of as an encoding, the value of that variable attribute is overwritten when writing to a NetCDF file, see this example: python import xarray as xr ds = xr.Dataset( {"values": ('time', [0.0, 0.1])}, coords={ 'time': ('time', [0, 1]), 'lat': ('time', [5, 4]), 'lon': ('time', [10, 12]) }) ds['values'].attrs['coordinates'] = "time lon lat" ds.to_netcdf("test.nc") shell $ ncdump -h test.nc netcdf test { dimensions: time = 2 ; variables: double values(time) ; values:_FillValue = NaN ; values:coordinates = "lon lat" ; int64 time(time) ; int64 lat(time) ; int64 lon(time) ; } Is this intended, and if so, what is the reason?