Doc errors in C++ interface

• To: netcdfgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Subject: Doc errors in C++ interface
• From: Michael McCarrick <mmccarri@xxxxxxxx>
• Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 16:14:42 -0500 (EST)

I have found two documentation errors in the netcdf C++ interface.
I am using release 3.3.1 on various platforms. First, in the NcTyped 
class (as well as the NcVar and NcAtt derived classes) the 
NcValues* values() member function documentation says:

        Returns a pointer to the block of all values for the variable 
        or attribute. This will be deleted when the variable or
        attribute is destroyed.

This is not true.  The allocated buffer is never deleted and leads to
significant memory leaks. The caller must delete this NcValues pointer
explicitly.

Second, the NcAtt member function long num_vals() documentation says:

        ... and the number of characters (including the terminating
        '\0' character) for a string-valued attribute.

Again, this is not true. The return value is just strlen(str_attr),
i.e., not including the terminating null.

And finally, there is a problem compiling on SunOS 4.x.  This os lacks
the memmove() system call, but has bcopy().  A simple def like:

#if defined(__sun__) && !defined(__svr4__)
#define memmove(dest, src, n)  bcopy((src),(dest),(n))
#endif

in libsrc/ncio.h or elsewhere takes care of the problem.  Configure
could probably be set up to handle this automatically.


Regards,

Mike McCarrick
mmccarri@xxxxxxxx