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Re: 19990223: netCDF on Unix and Windows

>To: address@hidden
>From: "Charlease L. Bobo" <address@hidden>
>Subject: netCDF on Unix and Windows
>Organization: Mission Research Corporation
>Keywords: 199902231937.MAA09071

Hi Charlease,

> I am currently creating a netCDF file on an
> SGI running 6.5.2. I then try to open the
> netCDF file from a Windows NT computer using
> PV-Wave netCDF utilities. But, I'm unable to
> open the file. I can open files on the PC
> when they are created on the PC.  I have
> tried using a unixtodos utility, and I'm
> still unable to open the file.
> 
> Are netCDF files incompatible between UNIX
> and DOS ?

No the files are compatible and you should be able to read (or write)
netCDF files written on SGI (or any other platform) on a DOS PC.

You should not have to use any "unixtodos" utility; using such a
utility would probably just corrupt a binary netCDF file, since such
utilities are usually intended for text files, to handle newlines and
"carriage returns" that terminate text lines.

My first guess would be that the copy you have on your PC of the file
created on your SGI is not an exact copy, but has been changed somehow
in transferring it.  For example, if you used ftp to copy it and did
not specify binary mode, the file would get mangled.  Do you have some
way to verify that the copy on your PC is byte-for-byte identical to
the original file created on SGI?  If not, perhaps you could attach
the file to a mail message and we could verify whether it looks like a
good netCDF file or not.

In case it helps, the first 4 bytes of every netCDF file should be
'C', 'D', 'F', and '\001' in that order, where '\001' indicates a byte
that corresponds to the ASCII SOH character, which has the numeric
value 1.  If the first four bytes are anything else or not in this
order, then the netCDF library will not recognize the file and will
refuse to open it.

--Russ

_____________________________________________________________________

Russ Rew                                         UCAR Unidata Program
address@hidden                     http://www.unidata.ucar.edu