[netcdfgroup] NetCDF4 variable specification in CDL

[Jed O. Kaplan]

Hello all,

Is there any way - currently or planned for the future - to specify  
netCDF4-specific variable definitions (e.g., deflate) in a CDL file?

As I often use ncgen on cdl files to create new netCDF files, this  
capability would be highly desirable.

As a workaround, I did try creating an empty netCDF-4 file with ncgen  
-v4 -b ... and then writing a little f90 program to run nf90_redef()  
and then set the "deflate" flags for each variable. But the library  
returned an error, saying this action is not possible after the  
variables are defined.  According to the documentation

"Once enddef has been called, it is impossible to set the deflate for  
a variable."

But I might imagine that one could call redef to change these flags?   
Unfortunately, this did not work for me.

Thanks for your help/ideas!

Jed