[Nexus] deleting data

[Carlos Pascual Izarra]

Is it really a matter of philosophy? 
Or is there some technical limitation as well?

Because, on philosophy grounds, I would argue that some types of data might be 
only of temporary interest. In my case, the question comes from using 
attributes to tag data internally (I asked about this in a recent email to 
the list). But I can think of other applications:  metadata that may change 
with analysis, or data linked from NXdata groups to construct a default plot 
that is refined on a later stage of the data processing,...

The workaround of creating a new file is non-practical: what if you are 
dealing with a huge file (e.g. a tomography experiment) in which you want to 
delete a single attribute?

Furthermore: it is obvious that providing the *ability* to erase data doesn't 
mean that someone is forced to do so. It would be an enhancement that some 
people may find useful, though.

So, I reformulate my question: is there a technical reason preventing from 
implementing data erasing?
Maybe dealing with compression?

Cheers!


On Wednesday 03 June 2009 14:35:01 Pete Jemian wrote:
> Not a silly question.  Not a bug.
> Instead, create a new file extracting only the wanted parts.
> Philosophy is that the data is precious, too precious to dispose.
>
> Carlos Pascual Izarra wrote:
> > Hello,
> > This might be a silly question, but...
> >
> > Is there a way of deleting data (i.e., attributes, data items, data
> > groups and links) from a nexus file?
> >
> > If not: does it make sense to open a bug ticket about it?
> >
> > Cheers,



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 Carlos Pascual Izarra
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