ncdump dates

• To: netcdfgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Subject: ncdump dates
• From: rick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 13:30:58 -0500

Hi All,

     A version of ncdump by Hoop used to be able to convert ncdump dates into
dates that can be read easily.  I lost that functionality recently, and the
cdcncdump was hard to compile using a newer version of netCDF.  I wrote a
short program that filters the output of ncdump and replaces the dates using
udunits.  It seems to work for NCEP Reanalysis data files.  A perl script
illustrates how it could be used on multiple NetCDF files:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
for ($a = 0; $a < scalar(@ARGV); $a++) {
  $command = "ncdump -c $ARGV[$a] | read.ncdump\n";
  system($command);
}

In case there are others in the same boat, the "read.ncdump.c" is available
in the contributed netCDF software catalog:

  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/Contrib.html

Cheers,                                   
Rick Danielson