filedimdef

Given a reference to a file, this procedure is used to define a list of dimension names, dimension sizes, and a logical array indicating whether the dimensions are unlimited.

Synopsis

	procedure filedimdef (
		thefile[1] : file,
		dimnames : string,
		dimsizes : integer,
		is_unlimited : logical
	)

Arguments

thefile
The reference to the file that you want to write the dimensions to.
dimnames
An array of dimension names you want to write to thefile.
dimsizes
An array of dimension sizes of the dimensions you want to write to thefile.
is_unlimited
An array of logical values indicating whether the corresponding dimensions are unlimited in size, note netCDF only allows one unlimited dimension.

Description

This procedure is used to pre-define dimensions in a file. Usually the file is being created and must have been opened as either read/write or create. The fourth parameter allows the dimension to be defined as unlimited. NetCDF files only allow one dimension to be unlimited. Unlimited dimensions can grow while normal dimensions can not. A typical use of unlimited dimensions is to create a data from multiple input files. For unlimited dimensions the size value is ignored. Unlimited dimensions have a size of 0 until a variable with the unlimited dimension name is assigned to the file.

Using this procedure is much more efficient than writing a variable's dimensions one at a time.

This procedure is part of a set of procedures called fileattdef, filevarattdef, and filevardef.

Example

  ncf = addfile("myfile.nc","c")
;
; Define dimensions.
;
  dimNames = (/ "lon", "lat", "lev", "time" /)
  dimSizes = (/ nlon, nlat, nlev, -1 /)
  dimUnlim = (/ False, False, False, True /)
  filedimdef( ncf, dimNames, dimSizes, dimUnlim )

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$Revision: 1.6 $ $Date: 1998/07/06 22:37:00 $