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[netCDF #APV-976877]: ncopen error message

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  • Subject: [netCDF #APV-976877]: ncopen error message
  • Date: Thu, 24 May 2012 10:46:32 -0600
Hi Peter,

> I have just begun using .hdf files and recently downloaded ncdump to
> display them in ASCII. The message "ncopen failed on <inputfile>.hdf" must
> be a common error message, but more detail would be helpful. Does this
> reflect something missing in my setup; a wrong version of something
> maybe? The file is ok since it displays correctly in hdfview. Please
> advise.

Do you know what version of the ncdump you are using?  You can find out by
looking at the last line of output from invoking "ncdump --version".

If you have a recent version of ncdump, such as 4.1.3 or 4.2, it's possible
that the message is correctly reporting that your HDF file uses an HDF5 feature
not supported by netCDF-4, such as reference type.  For a list of HDF5 features
intentionally omitted from netCDF-4, see these two FAQs:

  How can I convert HDF5 files into netCDF-4 files?
  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/netcdf/docs/faq.html#fv15

  Can netCDF-4 read arbitrary HDF5 files?
  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/netcdf/docs/faq.html#fv20

If you think ncdump should be able to view your HDF5 files, please make an
example file available to us on which ncdump fails, and we'll try to 
determine what the problem is.  For example, we've recently fixed some bugs 
related to reading attributes and variables that use fixed-length string
types, but those bug fixes are currently only available in the daily 
snapshot releases.

--Russ


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



Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: APV-976877
Department: Support netCDF
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed