Replace/edit character variable for multiple files

[Derrick Danso]

Dear all,

I am trying to replace the value of a character variable (say Times) in some multiple nc files.

I can do that for one file like this:
ncap2 -O -s 'Times(0,:)="2020-01-05_00:00:00";' file.nc file.nc

I want to automate this over all the files, but each file has a different value for the Times variable. For each file, I get the value from the file name and store it in a variable (not in the nc file) say newval. Then I perform the operation above in a loop.

I tried this but it didn’t work for me:

newval="2020-01-06_00:00:00"                           # this is different for each file
ncap2 -O -s 'Times(0,:)=$newval;' file.nc file.nc

I would appreciate any help with this.

Thanks
Derrick

[Charlie Zender]

This appears to be a quoting issue. Try

ncap2 -O -s "Times(0,:)=${newval}" file.nc file.nc

[Derrick Danso]

Thank you for your response!
I tried and got the following error:

Command-line script:1:22: unexpected token: _00

[Charlie Zender]

Be persistent, and notice the clues in the error message. Try

ncap2 -O -s "Times(0,:)=\"${newval}\"" file.nc file.nc

[Derrick Danso]

This works! I appreciate your help.