remove everything following a null terminating character in an string…

… attribute

docs/src/index.md

@@ -128,3 +128,17 @@ In fact, `_FillValue` must have the same data type as the corresponding variable
 tempvar.attrib["_FillValue"] = Float32(-9999.)
 ```
 
+
+## Corner cases
+
+
+* An attribute representing a vector with a single value (e.g. `[1]`) will be read back as a scalar (`1`) (same behavior in python netCDF4 1.3.1).
+
+* NetCDF and Julia distinguishes between a vector of chars and a string, but both are returned as string for ease of use, in particular 
+an attribute representing a vector of chars `['u','n','i','t','s']` will be read back as the string `"units"`.
+
+* An attribute representing a vector of chars `['u','n','i','t','s','\0']` will also be read back as the string `"units"` (issue #12).
+
+
+<!--  LocalWords:  NCDatasets jl Datasets Dataset netCDF
+ -->

src/netcdf_c.jl

@@ -542,7 +542,16 @@ function nc_get_att(ncid::Integer,varid::Integer,name)
     if xtype == NC_CHAR
         val = Vector{UInt8}(len)
         check(ccall((:nc_get_att,libnetcdf),Cint,(Cint,Cint,Cstring,Ptr{Void}),ncid,varid,name,val))
-        return join(Char.(val))
+
+        # remove everything following a null terminating character if present
+        # see issue #12
+        inull = findfirst(val .== 0)
+
+        if inull == 0
+            return join(Char.(val))
+        else
+            return join(Char.(view(val,1:inull-1)))
+        end
     elseif xtype == NC_STRING
         val = Vector{Ptr{UInt8}}(len)
         check(ccall((:nc_get_att,libnetcdf),Cint,(Cint,Cint,Cstring,Ptr{Void}),ncid,varid,name,val))

test/runtests.jl

@@ -167,7 +167,9 @@ println("NetCDF version: ",NCDatasets.nc_inq_libvers())
     include("test_vlen.jl")
 
     include("test_ncgen.jl")
-    include("test_varbyatt.jl")  
+    include("test_varbyatt.jl")
+
+    include("test_corner_cases.jl")
 
     # display
     s = IOBuffer()