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Re: 980310: netCDF Question

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  • Subject: Re: 980310: netCDF Question
  • Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 13:54:17 -0700
>To: address@hidden
>From: "Kristen E. Malechuk" <address@hidden>
>Subject: netCDF Question
>Organization: .
>Keywords: 199803101951.MAA16346

Hi Kristen,

> I think I may be trying to ask a very simple question, that may require a
> very difficult response.  But anyway...
> 
> I am doing some work for a research team that will be using the EPIC
> program.  What I need to know is how do we make the convesion of ASCII
> data type to netCDF?  We will be gathering data from the Seabird SBE-25
> and are using a IRIX computer system.
> 
> I really do not know what other information to add.  Is it possible also
> to see a sample file on how data is set up?

There are several possibilities:

 ncgen     a utility that can read an ASCII description of a netCDF dataset
           in the form of CDL (this is the same form as the ncdump
           utility outputs from a binary netCDF file, see for example
           
<http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/guidec/guidec-7.html#HEADING7-6>)

 ascii2nc  a perl script that is part of the Unidata decoders package,
           available from
           <http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/decoders/>.  This
           requires that you first install the netcdf-perl package.
           Here's a description from the man page:
        
           Creates a netCDF file from the specified cdl file, reads
           ASCII data from stdin and writes the data to the netCDF
           file. ascii2nc assumes the input data is in the same order
           and type as the variables are in the cdl file.  ...

 tbl2cdf   Chuck Denham's program to convert a flat ASCII table to a
           netCDF file. The program scans a flat ASCII table for the name
           and most general data type of each column. It then creates and
           populates a netCDF file with the data.  It's available in our
           user-contributed netCDF program collection, in
           <ftp://ftp.unidata.ucar.edu/pub/netcdf/contrib/tbl2cdf.c>.

Also, a custom program should not be too hard, if you use "ncgen -c" or
"ncgen -f" to generate the C or Fortran code needed to create a
specified netCDF file from a CDL file that specifies the structure of
your data.  Just insert the statements needed to read the ASCII data in
the generated program, and you may have what you need.

There may be other possibilities as well.  You can check the list of
netCDF software available at
<http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/software.html> for other
possibilities.

--Russ

_____________________________________________________________________

Russ Rew                                         UCAR Unidata Program
address@hidden                     http://www.unidata.ucar.edu