2012 Unidata NetCDF Workshop > Introduction to the NetCDF APIs
10.8 Perl APIs
Two Perl APIs for netCDF are
PDL::NetCDF and NetCDFPerl.
Strengths
- Newer, based on netCDF-4
- Uses PDL (the Perl Data
Language) with capabilities similar to Matlab and IDL.
- Installation is straightforward.
- perldl, a simple interactive shell for PDL, is available for
interactive prototyping of scripts.
- Fast when dealing with large multidimensional arrays.
- Contributed by Doug Hunt, COSMIC
Strengths
- Installation on RedHat systems easy from RPMs.
- NetCDFPerl documentation fairly complete, just use old
netCDF-2 User's Guide with small document that
describes differences.
- ncmanipulate package available for
modifying the schema of a netCDF file (adding, deleting, or renaming
dimensions, variables, and attributes).
Other Characteristics
- Based on the old netCDF-2 C interface, need to use netCDF-2 documentation.
- Building and installing can be a
challenge on new platforms.
- Developed at Unidata, but now in maintenance mode only,
no further development is currently planned.
2012 Unidata NetCDF Workshop > Introduction to the NetCDF APIs
