How come block names can't be longer than 32 characters?

[amna-ukaea]

Hi,
The block names I'm using are longer than 32 characters and Libmesh seems to have a max character allowance of 32 characters and so doesn't read the full names. Is there a way to fix this?

[jwpeterson]

This limit is part of the Exodus (and ulitmately the NetCDF) library itself. In Exodus, the relevant define is MAX_STR_LENGTH defined in include/exodusII.h:

#define MAX_STR_LENGTH 32L

So, one thing you could try is increasing this value and then recompiling everything. This might just "work" or it might lead to some other issues, I haven't tried it before.