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[netCDF #KCT-418837]: building netcdf 3.6.3

Hi Patrick,

> I am building netcdf 3.6.3. I'm curious why it is building a
> libnetcdf.4.dylib library instead of a netcdf 3 library. Is there a
> difference? A problem that I used to have with variable names containing
> illegal characters has now vanished, even though the problem still
> exists for people still using netcdf 3. Now I can't reproduce the problem.

You must have configured with --enable-shared, and I think the number used
for the shared library name is not necessarily related to the netCDF version
number.

> I installed the latest because I just switched machines. I'm building on
> Mac OSX 10.5.6, using gcc 4.0.1.
>
> With that said, the documentation says that:
>
> The names of dimensions, variables and attributes (and, in netCDF-4
> files, groups, user-defined types, compound member names, and
> enumeration symbols) consist of arbitrary sequences of alphanumeric
> characters, underscore '_', period '.', plus '+', hyphen '-', or at sign
> '@', but beginning with a letter or underscore. However names commencing
> with underscore are reserved for system use. Case is significant in
> netCDF names. A zero-length name is not allowed. Some widely used
> conventions restrict names to only alphanumeric characters or
> underscores.  NetCDF-4 permits UTF-8 encoded Unicode characters in names,
> as well as other special characters.
>
> ... so no spaces allowed, at least in netcdf 3.

Well spaces actually are allowed in names.  I'll have to fix that last
sentence in the documentation to read

  NetCDF-3.6.3 and later versions permit UTF-8 encoded Unicode characters
  in names, as well as other special characters.

> So what am I building against? netcdf 3? or netcdf 4?

With the 3.6.3 distribution, you are building against netcdf-3.  Also
with any netCDF-4 distribution if you don't configure with the option
--enable-netcdf-4, you are also building only a netCDF-3 library and
utilities.

--Russ

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



Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: KCT-418837
Department: Support netCDF
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed