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============================================================================== Robb Kambic Unidata Program Center Software Engineer III Univ. Corp for Atmospheric Research rkambic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx WWW: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/ ============================================================================== ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 19:13:13 -0800 (PST) From: Steve Diggs <sdiggs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: russ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: NetCDF Perl documentation Hi Russ, We actually met years ago during the CEPEX experiment when I was visiting Dick Dirks about logistics in Fiji. I've since moved on, more liked moved around SIO, but I've remained a loyal fan of NetCDF. In the last 6 years, I've also become a big fan of Perl, since it has unparalleled string processing capabilities and lots of other nice features. Recently, I've convinced the powers that be on my international data project(WOCE) to convert and exchange data in NetCDF. So far, so good. Since the software group that I manage uses Perl almost exclusively, we
decided to make all of our NetCDF code use the NetCDF/Perl interface. Well, to put it lightly, it's been a struggle. Robb Kambic has been quite helpful, but I feel as though I'm taking up a lot of his time asking dumb questions that could have been answered much more efficiently if I only had access to a comprehensive NetCDF/Perl manual. I have to keep asking, "how does one do blah, blah....". When I was using C to do this, the support was great and the documentation plentiful. Imagine trying to get users to try to use NetCDF in C or FORTRAN w/o extensive documentation with examples! You may think that there aren't a lot of people using your NetCDF/Perl interface, but that maybe because they tried and couldn't make heads or tails of it. BTW, there's a quote in the man page that really gives me heartburn:
" In addition to the above functions, most C macro constants
that are defined in the netCDF header file netcdf.h are also
available to a perl script by dropping any `NC_' substring
and using the NetCDF:: prefix, e.g. NetCDF::LONG."
Not NetCDF 3!
Well, you can't just use the docs for the C interface since the function names are different! I found out (on my own) that one must refer to the obsolete NetCDF 2 (1996) docs. Why isn't Perl getting the attention that FORTRAN and C are? Has it really been three years since the Perl interface has had any attention? I would switch to C, but trust me, it would consume a lot more resources here and would be very inefficient for us. I don't mean to complain incessantly, but I'm finding the going hard and slow developing my software in Perl to use NetCDF. Usually, this indicates that a particular interface will soon be dropped from official support due to lack of interest, and that would be a shame, for there are a lot of Perl users out there (I teach a class for UCSD extension and they're *always* sold out) that use the language in a lot of science-related applications. Many more than, say, Java. Please reply, I'd like to know your thoughts on this subject. I still remain a fan of NetCDF. all the best,-sd --
-------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Diggs, Data Manager Voice: (858)534-1108 Scripps Institution of Oceanography FAX : (858)534-7383 WOCE Hydrographic Program Office/STS EMAIL: sdiggs@xxxxxxxx 9500 Gilman Drive WWW : whpo.ucsd.edu La Jolla, CA 92093-0214 --------------------------------------------------------------------
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