perl 5.8 and netCDF perl

Andrew,

>Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 16:18:24 -0600
>From: Andrew Loughe <address@hidden>
>Organization: NOAA
>To: address@hidden
>Subject: perl 5.8 and netCDF perl

The above message contained the following:

> Do you know if there are any known problems with running netCDF perl
> under perl version 5.8?  Thanks!

The netCDF-Perl package has a problem under perl 5.8.  When building the
netCDF-Perl package, the command "make test" results in the following:

    make[2]: Entering directory 
`/home/bmurch/software/perl/netcdf-perl-1.2.2/src/perl'
    cp NetCDF.pm blib/lib/NetCDF.pm
    AutoSplitting blib/lib/NetCDF.pm (blib/lib/auto/NetCDF)
    Running Mkbootstrap for NetCDF ()
    chmod 644 NetCDF.bs
    cp NetCDF.bs blib/arch/auto/NetCDF/NetCDF.bs
    chmod 644 blib/arch/auto/NetCDF/NetCDF.bs
    PERL_DL_NONLAZY=1 /usr/bin/perl "-Iblib/lib" "-Iblib/arch" test.pl
    Creating netCDF file...........................ok
    Setting fill mode..............................ok
    Defining fixed dimensions......................ok
    Defining fixed variables.......................ok
    Writing global attribute.......................ok
    Writing variable attributes....................ok
    Defining record dimension......................ok
    Defining record variables......................ok
    Ending definition..............................ok
    Writing fixed variable values..................ok
    Synchronizing netCDF I/O.......................ok
    Writing record values..........................ok
    Closing netCDF file............................ok
    Opening netCDF file for reading................ok
    Inquiring about netCDF file....................ok
    Checking global attribute name.................ok
    Checking global attribute value................ok
    Getting second dimension ID....................ok
    Checking second dimension information..........ok
    Checking fixed variable ID.....................ok
    Checking fixed variable information............ok
    Checking last value of first record variable...make[2]: *** [test_dynamic] 
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
    ...

Apparently, version 5.8 of the Perl package has a bug that is tickled
by the netCDF-Perl package.  The only workaround of which I'm aware is
to use a different version of the perl package (e.g., 5.7).

It could be that the more recent versions of perl 5.8 (e.g., 5.8.5) do
not have this problem.

> Andrew Loughe =====================================================
> NOAA/OAR/FSL/AD   R/FS5  |  email: address@hidden
> 325 Broadway             |  wwweb: www-ad.fsl.noaa.gov/users/loughe
> Boulder, CO  80305-3328  |  phone: 303-497-6211   fax: 303-497-6301

Regards,
Steve Emmerson