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Data compression

To: netcdfgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Data compression
From: montnaro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1992 12:00:54 EDT


I think compression is better left to external programs for the most part.
Could you modify ncopen() and ncclose() to automatically uncompress and
compress files? For instance, suppose you execute:

        ncopen("foo.cdf", NC_WRITE);

and foo.cdf doesn't exist but foo.cdf.Z does. Would it be difficult to have
it pipe foo.cdf.Z through "uncompress -c" before presenting it to the user?
Oops, maybe this won't work, since netcdf doesn't deal well with pipes.
Hmmm...

Skip (montanaro@xxxxxxxxxx)