The NetCDF package consists of a few tools to operate on NetCDF and, by utilizing the compatibility API, HDF4 files. The tools are intended to be used from shell scripts. They include a couple of simple shell wrappers over the respective NetCDF functions (ncattget and ncattput) and a more sophisticated ncget tool. The ncget tool delivers (for NetCDF) or complements (for HDF4) the functionality of the "hdp dumpsds" command. It allows a selected part of a NetCDF variable or an HDF4 scientific data set (SDS) to be extracted in either an ASCII or binary form, applying the transformation specified by the scale_factor and add_offset attributes. This tool allows one to feed the data of NetCDF variables (or HDF4 SDS) to other tools designed to operate on either ASCII (text) or raw (binary) data.
