Warn on repeated dimension names during construction

doc/whats-new.rst

@@ -34,6 +34,10 @@ New Features
 Breaking changes
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
+- Explicitly forbid creating xarray objects with repeated dimension names.
+  This is technically a breaking change, but whilst allowed by the constructor,
+  this behaviour was never actually supported! (:issue:`3731`, :pull:`8491`)
+  By `Tom Nicholas <https://github.com/TomNicholas>`_.
 
 Deprecations
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~

xarray/core/common.py

@@ -21,6 +21,7 @@
     emit_user_level_warning,
     is_scalar,
 )
+from xarray.namedarray.core import _raise_if_any_duplicate_dimensions
 
 try:
     import cftime
@@ -217,6 +218,7 @@ def get_axis_num(self, dim: Hashable | Iterable[Hashable]) -> int | tuple[int, .
             return self._get_axis_num(dim)
 
     def _get_axis_num(self: Any, dim: Hashable) -> int:
+        _raise_if_any_duplicate_dimensions(self.dims, dim)
         try:
             return self.dims.index(dim)
         except ValueError:

xarray/core/variable.py

@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@
     is_duck_array,
     maybe_coerce_to_str,
 )
-from xarray.namedarray.core import NamedArray
+from xarray.namedarray.core import NamedArray, _raise_if_any_duplicate_dimensions
 
 NON_NUMPY_SUPPORTED_ARRAY_TYPES = (
     indexing.ExplicitlyIndexed,
@@ -2876,11 +2876,8 @@ def _unified_dims(variables):
     all_dims = {}
     for var in variables:
         var_dims = var.dims
-        if len(set(var_dims)) < len(var_dims):
-            raise ValueError(
-                "broadcasting cannot handle duplicate "
-                f"dimensions: {list(var_dims)!r}"
-            )
+        _raise_if_any_duplicate_dimensions(var_dims, err_context="Broadcasting")
+
         for d, s in zip(var_dims, var.shape):
             if d not in all_dims:
                 all_dims[d] = s

xarray/namedarray/core.py

@@ -481,6 +481,14 @@ def _parse_dimensions(self, dims: _DimsLike) -> _Dims:
                 f"dimensions {dims} must have the same length as the "
                 f"number of data dimensions, ndim={self.ndim}"
             )
+        if len(set(dims)) < len(dims):
+            repeated_dims = set([d for d in dims if dims.count(d) > 1])
+            warnings.warn(
+                f"Duplicate dimension names present: dimensions {repeated_dims} appear more than once in dims={dims}. "
+                "We do not yet support duplicate dimension names, but we do allow initial construction of the object. "
+                "We recommend you rename the dims immediately to become distinct, as most xarray functionality is likely to fail silently if you do not.",
+                UserWarning,
+            )
         return dims
 
     @property

xarray/tests/test_namedarray.py

@@ -475,3 +475,7 @@ def _new(
         var_float2: Variable[Any, np.dtype[np.float32]]
         var_float2 = var_float._replace(("x",), np_val2)
         assert var_float2.dtype == dtype_float
+
+    def test_warn_on_repeated_dimension_names(self) -> None:
+        with pytest.warns(UserWarning, match="Duplicate dimension names"):
+            NamedArray(("x", "x"), np.arange(4).reshape(2, 2))