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NOTICE: This version of the NSF Unidata web site (archive.unidata.ucar.edu) is no longer being updated.
Current content can be found at unidata.ucar.edu.
To learn about what's going on, see About the Archive Site.
> 1) Is it true that any program written with the netCDF3 API > needs minimal (no?) changes to read such a netCDF-4 compressed > file, once the application has been relinked with the netCDF-4 > library? Yes that is true. *No* changes required. (Unless I am very much mistaken, which does happen from time to time.) > 2) Can anyone tell me if programming languages like IDL or MATLAB > have been linked with the netCDF-4 library? (I suspect not, but > I haven't been able to determine this by running 'nm' or 'ldd'). > 3) Has anyone heard discussions about IDL supporting netCDF-4 or > using HDF5 1.8.1? IDL has a built-in netCDF interface. In the current version of IDL, 7.0.x, it does not support netCDF-4. In fact it doesn't even support netCDF-3 fully, in that it chokes on files > 2 GiB, even those that are handled by the netCDF 3.6.x library. The next version of IDL, presumably 8.x, was in beta several months ago, so I expect a release in a few months. I do not know if there has been any advance in its netCDF support. I submit feature requests from time to time requesting such advances. You will have to ask ITTVis about their plans. Doubtless it would be possible for a third party to write a netCDF plug-in for IDL to read netCDF-4. As far as I know, no-one has. > 4) Has anyone heard discussions about MATLAB supporting netCDF-4 > or using HDF5 1.8.1? Matlab does not have a built-in netCDF interface, but there are (or have been) several open-source add-ons that provide such an interface. I do not know if any of these has been updated to support netCDF-4. Relinking one of these against the netCDF-4 library should be trivial (see response to question 1). > 5) What's the "market penetration" of netCDF-4? Does anyone have > a feel for how many netCDF-3 users have at least relinked with the > netCDF-4/HDF5 libraries, even if they aren't using the more advanced > netCDF-4 features, like groups? Not many, I suspect, but it will come soon. As an example, an ocean model that I use, ROMS, has recently acquired support for netCDF-4 in order to access the compression facilities. The ROMS developers are probably early adopters, however. My question: Are you aware that the NetCDF Operators (NCO) suite provides easy conversion between netCDF-3 and netCDF-4 formats? This can be very useful in heterogeneous environments. Mark Hadfield "Kei puwaha te tai nei, Hoea tahi tatou" m.hadfield@xxxxxxxxxx NIWA NIWA is the trading name of the National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research Ltd.
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