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This Guide documents the March 1993 release of netCDF 2.3, which preserves the same file format but adds a few new functions to the C and Fortran interfaces.
The suggested extension for netCDF files has been changed from
.cdf to .nc, in order to avoid a clash with the NASA CDF
file extension. Although the old extension is still supported in a
backward compatible way, new netCDF files should use the new filename
extension, where practical.
Subsampling along specified dimensions (using `strides') is one of the
commonly-asked-for features supported by the new ncvarputg() and
ncvargetg() interfaces for generalized hyperslab access. In
addition, these interfaces permit accessing data that is not contiguous
in memory. In a generalized hyperslab, an index mapping vector is used
to define the mapping between points in the generalized hyperslab and
the memory locations of the corresponding values. (See section Write a Generalized Hyperslab of Values.)
There are also some new interfaces that can be used to write, read, and inquire about records, where a record may contain multiple variables of different types and shapes. Where before you had to access a record's worth of data using multiple calls, now you may instead use a single call. (See section Put a Record.)
New optimizations for the library have resulted in significant speedups for accessing cross-sections involving non-contiguous data. Many bugs have been fixed, portability has been improved, and the installation has been greatly simplified for most systems.
The ncdump utility now supports several new command-line options including the ability to specify for which variables data values will be output, to provide brief annotations in the form of CDL comments to identify data values for large multidimensional variables, or to provide full annotations in the form of trailing CDL comments for every data value.
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