netCDF operators NCO version 2.9.7 are ready

• To: NCO Annnounce <nco-announce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
• Subject: netCDF operators NCO version 2.9.7 are ready
• From: Charlie Zender <zender@xxxxxxx>
• Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 15:42:36 -0700

The netCDF operators NCO version 2.9.7 are ready. 

http://nco.sf.net (Homepage)
http://dust.ess.uci.edu/nco (Homepage "mirror")

First, Large File support (LFS) is now enabled by default.
Subject to physical memory limitations, this allows 32-bit OSs
files > 2 GB. Compile libnetcdf.a with LFS too, for this to work.
Disable this with ./configure --disable-largefile
See nco/data/big.cdl for sample LFS tests

Second, multi-file operations are more user friendly.
Multi-file operators (nc[re]a, nc[re]cat) now take input file lists from stdin.
The old method, passing input file names through the shell, fails on
many OSs (e.g., AIX) when the filelist is 25k characters or more.  
Use this new capability to pipe long lists of input file names
directly to NCO multi-file operators, e.g.,  

/bin/ls | grep ${CASEID}_'......'.nc | ncra -O -o output.nc

This avoids all shell limitations.
When the input file names are specified via stdin, NCO multi-file
operators will store the number of input files in the
"nco_input_file_number" global attribute and the input file names in the  
"nco_input_file_list" global attribute (unless you pass it -H).

This preserves the data processing "chain of evidence".

Read more about it in 

http://nco.sf.net/nco.html#stdin
http://nco.sf.net/nco.html#fl_lst_in

Enjoy,
Charlie

Feature changes:
1. Multi-file operators accept input filenames from stdin
2. Multi-file operators add nco_input_file_list, nco_input_file_number 
   global attributes by default for input file names from stdin.
3. Add nco_openmp_thread_number global attribute when threaded
4. Add -t, --thr_nbr, --omp_num_threads switch to specify threads

Bug-fixes:
1. Fix segfaults since 2.9.6 when no input filename present for
   non-multi-file-operators 

Build changes:
1. LFS enabled by default
2. Fix nco_tst.pl test script hangs waiting for interactive responses
3. Change prototype source of fabsf(), sqrtf() to help HP-UX builds
4. Try to use NCO-supplied float-valued functions (e.g., cosf()) on AIX

Other user-visible changes:
1. Add nco_put_att<int,short,long> functions to libnco_c++
2. Reworked stdin to avoid mixing string and character input.
   Interactive responses to "overwrite (o/a/e)?" questions must now be
   terminated with carriage return (and are case-insensitive)
3. ln works in ncap as natural logarithm (synonym for log())
4. Changed old ncwa -t to ncwa -T so can use -t for threads
5. size_t type correctly printed on platforms without %zu support

User-invisible changes:
1. Added additional file diagnostics to debugging output
2. Added $dbg_lvl variable to print nco_tst.pl tests during execution

-- 
Charlie Zender, surname@xxxxxxx, (949) 824-2987, Department of Earth 
System Science, University of California, Irvine CA 92697-3100