1 Use of the NetCDF Library
You can use the netCDF library without knowing about all of the netCDF
interface. If you are creating a netCDF dataset, only a handful of
routines are required to define the necessary dimensions, variables,
and attributes, and to write the data to the netCDF dataset. (Even
less are needed if you use the ncgen utility to create the dataset
before running a program using netCDF library calls to write
data. See ncgen (NetCDF Users Guide).)
Similarly, if you are writing software to access data stored in a
particular netCDF object, only a small subset of the netCDF library is
required to open the netCDF dataset and access the data. Authors of
generic applications that access arbitrary netCDF datasets need to be
familiar with more of the netCDF library.
In this chapter we provide templates of common sequences of netCDF
calls needed for common uses. For clarity we present only the names of
routines; omit declarations and error checking; omit the type-specific
suffixes of routine names for variables and attributes; indent
statements that are typically invoked multiple times; and use ... to
represent arbitrary sequences of other statements. Full parameter
lists are described in later chapters.
