netCDF 4.2.1.1
Parts of a NetCDF-4 HDF5 File

NetCDF-4 files are created with the HDF5 library, and are HDF5 files in every way, and can be read without the netCDF-4 interface.

(Note that modifying these files with HDF5 will almost certainly make them unreadable to netCDF-4.)

Groups in a netCDF-4 file correspond with HDF5 groups (although the netCDF-4 tree is rooted not at the HDF5 root, but in group “_netCDF”).

Variables in netCDF coorespond with identically named datasets in HDF5. Attributes similarly.

Since there is more metadata in a netCDF file than an HDF5 file, special datasets are used to hold netCDF metadata.

The _netcdf_dim_info dataset (in group _netCDF) contains the ids of the shared dimensions, and their length (0 for unlimited dimensions).

The _netcdf_var_info dataset (in group _netCDF) holds an array of compound types which contain the variable ID, and the associated dimension ids.

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Generated on Tue Aug 6 2013 11:40:57 for netCDF. NetCDF is a Unidata library.