Francesc Alted wrote: > A Monday 25 May 2009 19:55:28 Eric Firing escrigué: >>>> If the aim is to come up with a method of saving numpy arrays that uses >>>> a standard protocol and does not introduce large dependencies, then >>>> could this be accomplished using netcdf instead of hdf5, specifically >>>> Roberto De Almeida's pupynere, which is already in scipy.io as >>>> netcdf.py? Or does hdf5 have essential characteristics for this purpose >>>> that netcdf lacks? > > After looking a bit at the code of pupynere, there is the next line: > > assert magic == 'CDF', "Error: %s is not a valid NetCDF 3 file" % > self.filename > > So, the current version of pupynere is definitely for version 3 of NetCDF, > not > version 4.
Yes, and I presume it will stay that way--which is fine for the question I am asking above. I should have said "netcdf3" explicitly. Its simplicity compared to hdf5 and netcdf4 is potentially a virtue. The question is, is it *too* simple for the intended purpose? > >>> >From what I understand, netCFD is based on on HDF5, at least as of the >>> >>> version 4 release. >> Netcdf4 is indeed built on hdf5, but netcdf3 is not, and netcdf3 format >> is likely to stick around for a *very* long time. The netcdf4 library >> is backwards-compatible with netcdf3. > > NetCDF4 is backwards-compatible with NetCDF3 just at API level, not the file > format. NetCDF3 has a much more simple format, and completely different from > NetCDF4, which is based on HDF5. Yes, but the netcdf4 *library* includes full netcdf3 compatibility; you can read and write netcdf3 using the netcdf4 library. For example, you can build Jeff Whitaker's http://code.google.com/p/netcdf4-python/ with all the hdf5 bells and whistles, and it will still happily read and, upon request, write netcdf3 files. Eric > > Cheers, > _______________________________________________ Numpy-discussion mailing list Numpy-discussion@scipy.org http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
