951106: netCDF data files

>From: address@hidden
>Organization: NOAA
>Keywords: 199511061757.AA09383 netCDF MSDOS

Michael,

>My boss, Richard Livingston, has some netCDF data 
>files of Jan. 1992 data, in netCDF format.  We are 
>having trouble trying to read the data with your 
>programs.

Programs?  Do you mean that you can't build the netCDF package
or are you having problems running ncdump and/or ncgen?

>I am not running OS/2, I am running MSDOS 6.22 and I 
>have Microsoft FORTRAN, version 5.1, and Borland 
>C++, version 3.0 for DOS.  

The make files that we distribute with netCDF will work for
MS Fortran 5.1 and MS C 6.0.  

>When I installed the 
>FORTRAN I didnot install it with C capability, maybe 
>I need to reinstall FORTRAN.

Since I havn't tried using MS Fortran and Borland C++ in combination
with each other, I can't tell you if this will work (i.e. I don't know
if you can call Borland C from MS Fortran).  In either case, a routine
I wrote that allows a MS C routine to figure out how many characters
are in a string passed from Fortran works only with MS C 6.0.  This
routine would have to be reworked for Borland C++ if you are using
strings.

>Ether way we need to 
>know what we need to do to read this data, or 
>convert it to ASCII.

You could get MS C 6.0 and use the distribution as is, or you could
use ncdump to list out the contents of the data file(s) in ASCII
form.  Ncdump is distributed as an executable for MS DOS systems.
You can pickup the executable, NCDUMP.EXE, from the pub/netcdf/msdos
directory of anonymous FTP on our server, ftp.unidata.ucar.edu.

>The data we want out of these files is the Station 3 
>letter ID, Date, Lat., Lon., U, V, W, and Height.
>        
>I would appreciate any assistance you could give me 
>with this data.

In lieu of switching to MS C, you could use NCDUMP to list out the
data in the file.  You could also send a note to the netCDF email
group (address@hidden) to see if anyone else has built
netCDF using the environment that you have.

>Michael Manker                  tel. (816) 426-5672
>Computer Specialist             fax  (816) 426-3301
>National Weather Service
>601 E 12th St, room 1836
>Kansas City, MO 64106-2897
>e-mail address@hidden

Tom Yoksas