Re: 20020805: Sample C Programs for Reading and Writing a netCDF file? (fwd)

------- Forwarded Message

Date:    Tue, 06 Aug 2002 10:07:29 -0600
From:    Russ Rew <address@hidden>
To:      David Han <address@hidden>
Subject: Re: 20020805: Sample C Programs for Reading and Writing a netCDF file? 

>To: address@hidden
>cc: address@hidden
>From: David Han <address@hidden>
>Subject: Sample C Programs for Reading and Writing a netCDF file?
>Organization: UCAR/Unidata
>Keywords: 200208051831.g75IVZK13882

Hi David,

> I just downloaded and installed the binary distribution of the netCDF 
> 3.5 library for Mac OS X.  I've never used netCDF before and am 
> wondering whether you have any sample programs (written in C) that 
> reads and writes a netCDF file.  If you do, I'd appreciate very much 
> for getting a copy from you.

The C User's Guide

  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/guidec

has lots of examples in the forms of program fragments, but no
complete examples.  The source for the program ncdump.c in
src/ncdump/ncdump.c is a complete example of a netCDF program that
opens and reads an arbitrary netCDF file, but it's too comprehensive
for a simple example, though the function do_ncdump() in that file
might be instructive.

There is another complete example in the netCDF source distribution,
in the file src/cxx/example.c, but it uses the old netCDF-2 interface;
it's there for comparison with the equivalent C++ example in that
directory, in src/cxx/example.cpp.  The version 2 C interface is still
supported, but we document and recommend that you use the netCDF-3
interface instead.  I've put an equivalent netCDF-3 example in:

  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/examples/example1.c

Another way to get a simple example of a C program that creates a
netCDF dataset is to first create a text file describing the structure
of the data, then use the "ncgen" netCDF utility with the "-c" option
to generate a C program that can be compiled to create the
corresponding netCDF file.  To see how to do this, consult Chapter 10,
"NetCDF Utilities":

  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/guidec/guidec-15.html#HEADING15-0

For other examples, you might check some of the open source software
that uses netCDF and that is listed in

  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/software.html

for example the NCO package.

Eventually I hope to get around to making some more complete and
instructive equivalent examples using all of the C, C++, Fortran, and
Java interfaces ...

--Russ

_____________________________________________________________________

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


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