Other options for characters and symbols in variable names

[wavingtowaves]

Submitter: Rob Crystal-Ornelas

I suggest the following changes: Currently, the reporting format says that variable names should only include: letters, numbers, hyphen, underscores.

With these restrictions, would have to reformat variable named:

Per recommendation of @vchendrix, keeping variable names restricted to letters, numbers, hyphen and underscore helps ensure that files are portable to as many languages as possible.

Options to consider for removing slash from variable name

• chloride_umol_per_l (this follows recommendations from: https://units-of-measurement.org/umol)
• chloride_micromol_per_l (the mu symbol is not ascii character so should be swapped out)
• chloride_micromol-per-l (in this case the underscore separates the variable being measured and the unit)
• Other option is to write a script to separate the unit from the variable being measured so that we fully comply with CSV guidelines.

With all the options listed above, we need to consider how much it may disrupt researchers already ingesting and using data that have variables in their original format.