951025: netCDF ragged array support

Bryan,

> From: "E. Bryan George" <address@hidden>
> Organization: Texas Instruments, Inc.
> Keywords: 199510251936.AA02335 netCDF variable length dimensions

In the above message you wrote:
 
> Greetings,
> 
> I am very interested in the netCDF format, but have a pressing need on a 
> sizeable project to deal with storage/retrieval of variable-length array 
> sequences - a set of variable-order speech feature vectors, to be 
> specific.  I need random access to the same as well.
> 
> Naturally, seeing your mention of support for ragged arrays/structures 
> as a "future work" item is intriguing, but I need to decide on a file 
> format pretty quickly.  I'm afraid if netCDF goes by the boards now, it 
> will be hard to redirect toward it later once much data has been 
> processed and file conversion becomes necessary.
> 
> Could you give me an idea of how far you've gotten with ragged array 
> support?  If you're ready for beta testing, we would be very interested.
> 
> Thanks in advance for the information.
> 
> Bryan

We have not yet begun to implement support for ragged arrays.  The
concept (and a possible implementation) was developed by Harvey Davies
in consultation with us.  Harvey is coming here about a week for,
I believe, five months, to work on ragged array support and other
netCDF-related things.

I'm afraid that's as time-specific as I can be.

If you have further questions, please feel free to contact us.

--------
Steve Emmerson   <address@hidden>