2010 Unidata NetCDF Workshop > Using Groups and NetCDF-4 Types
22.9 Learning about User Defined Types
Inquiry functions in netCDF-4 allow users to learn about user-defined
types when reading a file.
20 netCDF inquiry functions provide information about user
defined types in the C library, and there are analogous functions in
libraries for the other language APIs.
C prototypes for type inquiry functions, from netcedf.h
- There are a potentially infinite number of user-defined
types.
- Types may be nested arbitrarily deep.
- For these reasons, there was some scepticism that perfectly
general netCDF utilities could be easily developed in low-level languages
such as C or Fortran.
- The C utilities ncdump, ncgen, and nccopy show developing such generic
programs is practical.
2010 Unidata NetCDF Workshop > Using Groups and NetCDF-4 Types