Unidata

• Remember to explicitly flush or close a netCDF dataset you are writing to make sure all the data gets written to disk.
• The caller is responsible for making sure there is enough memory space into which data will be read. Because many APIs do not include a parameter for how much space the caller is providing, this cannot be checked by compilers.
• The simplest call to write netCDF data writes all the values of a variable at once from an array. If you try to write all the values of a record variable into a netCDF file that has no record data yet (hence has 0 records), nothing will be written.
• Similarly, if you try to write or read all of a record variable, but there are more records in the file than you assume, this may result in a segmentation violation.
• If reading character data using the C API, note that the caller is responsible for making the character array into a string by explicitly adding null termination, even for attribute values.

2009 Unidata NetCDF Workshop for Developers and Data Providers > NetCDF APIs