issues: 271043420

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id node_id number title user state locked assignee milestone comments created_at updated_at closed_at author_association active_lock_reason draft pull_request body reactions performed_via_github_app state_reason repo type
271043420 MDU6SXNzdWUyNzEwNDM0MjA= 1689 Roundtrip serialization of coordinate variables with spaces in their names 1217238 open 0     5 2017-11-03T16:43:20Z 2024-03-22T14:02:48Z   MEMBER      

If coordinates have spaces in their names, they get restored from netCDF files as data variables instead: ```

xarray.open_dataset(xarray.Dataset(coords={'name with spaces': 1}).to_netcdf()) <xarray.Dataset> Dimensions: () Data variables: name with spaces int32 1 ````

This happens because the CF convention is to indicate coordinates as a space separated string, e.g., coordinates='latitude longitude'.

Even though these aren't CF compliant variable names (which cannot have strings) It would be nice to have an ad-hoc convention for xarray that allows us to serialize/deserialize coordinates in all/most cases. Maybe we could use escape characters for spaces (e.g., coordinates='name\ with\ spaces') or quote names if they have spaces (e.g., coordinates='"name\ with\ spaces"'?

At the very least, we should issue a warning in these cases.

 
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