[netCDF #JNH-860762]: Problems with CDL/vlen example

Lynton,

> Finally, (Russ), I asked your oppinion about possibilities for
> improving the API of the user-defined type. I note that there was
> an email alluding to this (see attached). Any opinions you have would
> be of interest.

The email you attached was about use of the Fortran API for writing data
of a compound user-defined type.  I generally agreed with David Pierce
that a beginning Fortran user would find the Fortran API for writing
compound data difficult to use, mostly because it requires member-at-a-time
writes, explicit specification of offsets, and use of character data type, as 
it says in the documentation:

  In Fortran a character buffer must be used for the compound data. The user 
  must read the data from within that buffer in the same way that the C 
  compiler which compiled netCDF would store the structure.

  The use of compound types introduces challenges and portability issues for 
  Fortran users.

We intend to improve this situation when we update the Fortran API to make 
use of the Fortran 2003 standard for C interoperability and make use of
Fortran derived types.

I'm not sure that changes to the C++ API to handle compound types would be very
relevant to the Fortran API, but I could be wrong.

--Russ


--Russ

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



Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: JNH-860762
Department: Support netCDF
Priority: Critical
Status: Closed