[no subject]

#!/opt/bin/perl
  use NetCDF ;
  $ncid   = NetCDF::create("demo.nc", NetCDF::CLOBBER ) ;
  $dimid = NetCDF::dimdef($ncid, 'recNum', NetCDF::UNLIMITED);
  $stadim = NetCDF::dimdef($ncid,"stations",10) ;
  $strlen = 10 ;
  $strdim = NetCDF::dimdef($ncid,"strlen", $strlen) ;
  $varid  = NetCDF::vardef($ncid,"station",NetCDF::CHAR,[$dimid,$strdim]);
  NetCDF::endef($ncid) ;

  @names = ( "abcdef", "ABCDEF","A", "B", "C", "D", "E", "F", "G", "H" ) ;
  for ($i = 0 ; $i < 10 ; $i++ ) {
      $names[ $i ] = padstr( $names[ $i ], $strlen ) ;
      NetCDF::varput( $ncid, $varid, [$i,0], [1, $strlen], \$names[ $i ] ) ;
      #NetCDF::varput( $ncid, $varid, [$i,0], [1,10], "??????????" ) ;
      }

  #NetCDF::varput( $ncid, $varid, [3,2], [2,7], \@names ) ;

  NetCDF::close($ncid) ;

        
# pad str to correct length
sub padstr
{
( $str, $len ) = @_ ;

my( $size, $i ) ;

$size = length( $str ) ;

for( $i = $size; $i < $len; $i++ ) {
        $str .= "\0" ;
        #print "$str,\n" ;
}
if( $size > $len ) {
        print STDOUT "String length is over $len chars long:\n $str\n" ;
        $str = substr( $str, 0, $len ) ;
        #exit 0 ;
}
return $str ;
}
__END__

And this is what I get from ncdump:

ncdump demo.nc
netcdf demo {
dimensions:
        recNum = UNLIMITED ; // (10 currently)
        stations = 10 ;
        strlen = 10 ;
variables:
        char station(recNum, strlen) ;
data:

 station =
  "abcdef",
  "ABCDEF",
  "A",
  "B",
  "C",
  "D",
  "E",
  "F",
  "G",
  "H" ;
}  
===============================================================================
Robb Kambic                                Unidata Program Center
Software Engineer III                      Univ. Corp for Atmospheric Research
address@hidden             WWW: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/
===============================================================================