Some Common Errors to Avoid

7.12 Some Common Errors to Avoid

Here is a list of some common errors to avoid in using netCDF APIs, based on support questions and experience assisting users.

Always, always, ALWAYS check the return code of every netCDF call. If it is not zero, there has been an error.
Remember to explicitly flush or close a netCDF dataset you are writing to make sure all the data gets written to disk.
The caller is responsible for making sure there is enough memory space into which data will be read. Because many APIs do not include a parameter for how much space the caller is providing, this cannot be checked by compilers.
The simplest call to write netCDF data writes all the values of a variable at once from an array. If you try to write all the values of a record variable into a netCDF file that has no record data yet (hence has 0 records), nothing will be written.
Similarly, if you try to write or read all of a record variable, but there are more records in the file than you assume, this may result in a segmentation violation.
If reading character data using the C API, note that the caller is responsible for making the character array into a string by explicitly adding null termination, even for attribute values.