GrADS User Defined Functions

User Defined Functions (UDFs)

Overview of User Defined Functions
The user defined function table
Format of the function data transfer file
Format of the function result file
Example: Linear Regression Function

Users may write their own GrADS functions in the computer language of their choice, and have them available from the GrADS expression facility (via the display command). Some possible user defined functions might be:

filtering functions
grid interpolation functions
thermodynamic functions

You may write a function that can be invoked via the GrADs expression facility. This function may be written in any computer language, and may perform any desired I/O, calculations, etc. Please read the following documentation carefully to understand the restrictions to this capability.

Overview of User Defined Functions

The steps that GrADS uses to invoke a user defined function are:

When GrADS is first started, it reads a file that describes the user defined functions. This file is called the 'user defined function table'.
When a user function is invoked via the display command expression, GrADS parses the arguments to the functions, obtains the results of any expressions, and writes the resultant data to a 'function data transfer file'.
Please note that in a user-defined function adding the double quote ("") around a char argument passes the string directly without the usual conversion to lower case and removal of blanks, e.g.,

d grhilo(slp,F8.2,"This is the Label",0.25)
Here F8.2 is passed as f8.2, but the second character string would not be converted to thisisthelabel.

A user written program is then invoked. This program may read the function data transfer file, do any desired processing, then write the result into a function result file.

GrADS will read the function result file and generate the internal objects necessary for this result to participate in the remainder of the expression evaluation.

The user defined function table

The user defined function table (UDFT) is a simple text file that contains information about each user defined function. There are five records for each defined function, and the file may contains descriptions for any number of functions. The 5 records are:

Field 2: An integer value, specifying the minimum number of arguments that the function may have.

Field 3: An integer value, specifying the maximum number of arguments that the function may have. This may not be more than 8.

Field 4 to N: A keyword describing the data type of each argument:

expr: The argument is an expression.

value: The argument is a data value.

char: The argument is a character string.

Record 2: This record contains blank delimited option keywords. Current keywords are:

sequential - GrADS will write data to the function data transfer file in FORTRAN sequential unformatted records. This is typically appropriate if the function is written in FORTRAN.

direct - GrADS will write data to the function data transfer file without any record descriptor words. This is typically appropriate if the function is written in C.

Record 3: This record contains the file name of the function executable routine. This routine will be invoked as its own separate process via the system call. Do a man system if you would like more information on the rules governing this system feature.

Record 4: This record contains the file name of the function data transfer file. This is the file that GrADS will write data to before invoking the user function executable, and is typically the file the function will read to obtain the data to be operated upon.

Record 5: This record contains the file name of the function result file. The function writes the result of its operations into this file in a specified format, and GrADS reads this file to obtain the result of the function calculation.

The user function definition table itself is pointed to by the environment variable GAUDFT. If this variable is not set, the function table will not be read. An example of setting this variable is:

setenv GAUDFT /usr/local/grads/udft

User defined functions have precedence over GrADS intrinsic functions, thus a user defined function can be set up to replace a GrADS function. Be sure you do not do this inadvertently by choosing a function name already in use by GrADS.

Format of the function data transfer file

The function data transfer file contains a header record plus one or more records representing each argument to the function. The user function routine will know what data types to expect (since they will be specified in the UDFT), and can read the file in a predictable way.

Header record: The header record always contains 20 floating point numbers. The record will always be the same size. Values defined in this record are:

2nd value: Set to zero, to indicate this particular transfer file format. The function should test this value, and return an error if non-zero, in order to be compatible with future enhancements to this file format.

Values 3 to 20: Reserved for future use.

Argument records: The argument records are written out in the order that the arguments are presented. The contents of the argument records depends on the data type of the argument: value, character string, or expression. Each of these data types will result in a different argument record being written out:

value: If the argument data type is a value, then the argument record will contain a single floating point value.
char: If the argument data type is a character string, then the argument record will an 80-byte character array that contains the argument string. If the argument string is longer than 80 bytes, the trailing bytes will be lost. If the argument is shorter, it will be padded with blanks. Note that the argument will already be processed by the GrADS expression parser, which will convert all characters to lower case and remove any blanks.
expr: If the argument data type is a gridded expression, then GrADS will evaluate the expression and write a series of records to the transfer file. Listed below are the records that will be written to the transfer file for each argument that is a gridded expression:

Format of the function result file

The function result file returns the result of the user defined function to GrADS. It is the responsibility of the function program to write this file in the proper format. A file written out in an improper format may cause GrADS to crash, or to produce incorrect results.

The result of a function is always a grid. Thus, the format of the function result file is as follows:

Header record: The header record should always contain 20 floating point numbers. The record will always be the same size. Values defined in this record are:

Values 3 to 20: Reserved for future use.

Grid records: The grid records should be written in the same order and format as the expr argument record in the data transfer file, with one important exception: the 3rd and 4th records containing the world coordinate values for each grid element in the i and j dimensions are written out to the function result file only if the scaling is non-linear. Thus the transfer file and the result file are not symmetric: GrADS writes a transfer file with record #3 and #4 always included, but it does NOT like to see record #3 and #4 in the result file if the dimensions are linear.

The linear/non-linear scaling of the grid dimensions is determined by examining the grid header contents -- values 6 and 7 contain the idim and jdim linear flags. Note that the time dimension is always linear.

Example: Linear Regression Function

This is a simple example of what a user defined function might look like in FORTRAN. This is a simple linear regression function, which only handles a 1-D grid and takes one argument, and expression.

First, the user defined function table (UDFT):

linreg 1 1 expr 
sequential 
/mnt/grads/linreg
/mnt/grads/linreg.out 
/mnt/grads/linreg.in

The source code for the FORTRAN program linreg is:

      real vals(20),ovals(20) 
      real x(10000),y(10000) 
c 
      open (8,file='/mnt/grads/linreg.out',form='unformatted') 
      open (10,file='/mnt/grads/linreg.in',form='unformatted') 
c 
      read (8)
      read (8) vals 
      idim = vals(2) 
      jdim = vals(3) 
c 
c  If this is not a 1-D grid, write error message and exit 
      if (idim.eq.-1 .or. jdim.ne.-1) then 
        write (6,*) 'Error: Invalid dimension environment'
        vals(1) = 1 
        write (10) vals 
        stop
      endif 
c 
c  If the grid is too big, write error message and exit 
      isiz = vals(4) 
      if (isiz.gt.10000) then 
        write (6,*) 'Error from linreg: Grid too big' 
        vals(1) = 1 
        write (10) vals 
        stop
      endif 
c 
c  Read the data 
      read (8) (y(i),i=1,isiz) 
c 
c  Read non-linear scaling if necessary 
      ilin = vals(6) 
      if (ilin.eq.0) then 
        read (8) (x(i),i=1,isiz) 
      else 
        do 100 i=1,isiz
          x(i) = i  
100     continue
      endif 
c 
c  Do linear regression 
      call fit (x,y,isiz,a,b) 
c 
c  Fill in data values 
      do 110 i=1,isiz 
        y(i) = a+x(i)*b  
110   continue 
c 
c  Write out return info.  
c  The header and the non-linear scaling 
c  info will be the same as what GrADs gave us. 
      ovals(1) = 0.0 
      write (10) ovals 
      write (10) vals 
      write (10) (y(i),i=1,isiz) 
      if (ilin.eq.0) write(10) (x(i),i=1,isiz) 
c 
      stop
      end 
c
c---------------------------------------------------
      SUBROUTINE FIT(X,Y,NDATA,A,B) 
c 
c A is the intercept 
c B is the slope 
c 
      REAL X(NDATA), Y(NDATA) 
c 
      SX = 0. 
      SY = 0. 
      ST2 = 0.
      B = 0. 
      DO 12 I = 1, NDATA 
        SX = SX + X(I) 
        SY = SY + Y(I)  
12    CONTINUE 
      SS = FLOAT(NDATA) 
      SXOSS = SX/SS
      DO 14 I = 1, NDATA 
        T = X(I) - SXOSS 
        ST2 = ST2 + T * T 
        B = B + T * Y(I)  
14    CONTINUE 
      B = B/ST2 
      A = (SY - SX * B)/SS 
      RETURN 
      END