2008 Unidata NetCDF Workshop for Developers and Data Providers > User Defined Types in NetCDF-4
16.12 Introuction to Variable Length Types
Variable length array types allow for the storage of ragged arrays.
- VLENs may be of any base type, including user-defined types.
- A VLEN must be written and read as a unit. You cannot read part of
a VLEN.
- You can have n-dimensional arrays of VLENs. You can read/write
subsets of these arrays.
- When reading VLEN you must free the memory that the library had to
allocate for it.
- You must use nc_vlen type in C.
- Problematic but possible in fortran 77 and fortran 90.
2008 Unidata NetCDF Workshop for Developers and Data Providers > User Defined Types in NetCDF-4