Generic type converter

All,

To support some generic data processing, I would like to find a
numeric type converter that takes a numeric (or double) input, and
converts to a numeric type specified by a string "type" argument such
as argument 2 of the "new" function. For example:

   y = type_convert (x, "float")

Or more generically, what I am really trying to do:

   y = type_convert (x, data_type)

Where "data_type" is a string containing the name of any legal NCL data type.

The following does not work for some output types, because NCL checks
for loss of precision in assignments, a valuable feature.

   y = new (1, data_type)
   y = x

Does anyone know a nice way to do this without a stack of if
statements? I did not find anything like this on the type converters
page. Thank you.

--Dave
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Received on Thu May 17 16:26:15 2012