20051220: netCDF Unix Build - Extracting data (in ASCII format) from Netcdf

>From: "Peter Msikela." <address@hidden>
>Organization: Howard University
>Keywords: 200512202058.jBKKwZQS004067 netCDF ncdump

Hi Peter,

>Institution: Howard University
>Package Version: 3
>Operating System: SunOS
>Hardware Information: SUNW,Ultra-5_10

re:
>Inquiry: Hi ,
>Which is the best way to get an ASCII data from Netcdf data file.In
>other words,if i have a netcdf file( usually contains metadata and data)
>and i want to get only ASCII data not including metadata, what is the
>best way to do that?

The quickest way to extract ASCII representations of data stored in
an netCDF file is to use the netCDF utility 'ncdump'.  Here is a
snippit from the 'ncdump' man page:

man ncdump

 ...
DESCRIPTION
     ncdump generates an  ASCII  representation  of  a  specified
     netCDF file on standard output.  The ASCII representation is
     in a form called CDL (``network Common Data form Language'')
     that  can  be  viewed,  edited,  or serve as input to ncgen.
     ncgen is a companion program  that  can  generate  a  binary
     netCDF  file from a CDL file.  Hence ncgen and ncdump can be
     used  as  inverses  to  transform  the  data  representation
     between  binary  and ASCII representations.  See ncgen for a
     description of CDL and netCDF representations.
 ...

As to what the best way to extract the data is, you could write
a program to extract the data in exactly the manner you want.
I think the best thing to do to start, however, is investigate use
of 'ncdump' to see if can do what you need.

Cheers,

Tom Yoksas
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