Re: Compressed netcdf and python module

Hi Bill,

> Russ and Steve -- I have a couple links to the netcdf stuff I e-mailed you
> about a couple of weeks ago.
> 
> The first is my netCDF module for python.  This code is fairly complete and
> I have been using it for some time.  There is one bug that causes crashes 
> when you open/close a lot of netCDF files that I am still tracking down.
> Here is the url: <http://snow.cit.cornell.edu/noon/ncmodule.html>
> 
> The second is an implementation of the compressed netCDF format that I 
> mentioned when we met last December.  This was facilitated when I found zlib
> a couple of weeks ago.  This is pretty much set and just needs one more 
> algorithic tweek (and some optimizations).
> 
> <http://snow.cit.cornell.edu/noon/z_netcdf.html>
> 
> I would a appreciate your comments before I make them generally available.

Thanks!


A quick look at the netCDF python definitions at

  http://snow.cit.cornell.edu/noon/python_def.html

raises a couple of questions.  (Sorry, I'm not very familiar with
python, so my questions may be misguided.):

  1.  Are the get/put methods for variables just assignment?  I didn't
      see any methods for actually reading or writing data.  I assume
      the get_rec and put_rec methods deal with dictionaries, not blocks
      of values.

  2.  Are there any methods that return the properties of a variable,
      such as its rank and type?  Or is a variable equivalent to a
      python variable so there are other means for obtaining that
      information?

--Russ