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MEXNC, SNCTOOLS, and the NetCDF Toolbox

Important News For R2008b

The R2008b release of MATLAB for the first time includes native support for netCDF. NetCDF support in R2008b manifests itself in the form of a package and it will utilize the netCDF-3 API. This will look quite a bit different than mexnc in its current form, so the obviously question is "Will my current MATLAB/netCDF code run on R2008b?" The answer to that is "hopefully, yes".

Updates of MEXNC, SNCTOOLS, and the NetCDF Toolbox are now available for R2008b. Instead of offering them separately, they are now bundled together since changes were required to each one to get them ready for R2008b. Details for each are somewhat different, so please check their respective READMEs. I did quite a bit of testing to make sure that the extensive test suites for MEXNC and SNCTOOLS are ok (with a few exceptions) on R2008b, but it's quite possible that I've missed a case or two. If you find that you have code that used to work in R2008a but causes errors with R2008b, please try to narrow down your problem as far as possible and let me know.

Please note that neither SNCTOOLS nor MEXNC nor the netcdf toolbox are supported by the MathWorks, so please do not ask the MathWorks for support regarding them. Also note that I did not write the netcdf toolbox, so I can't give much of any support to it. Yes really. If you have questions about SNCTOOLS or MEXNC, please continue to use the contact email address listed on this site.


Information for R14 thru R2008b

What's MEXNC?

MEXNC is a mex-file interface to NetCDF files for MATLAB, and has roughly a one-to-one equivalence with the C API for NetCDF. In fact, there's no better introduction to MEXNC than to read the NetCDF User's Guide for C provided by Unidata. It currently compiles with NetCDF library versions 3 and higher, and if it is built with 3.6.0 or higher, you may get the benefit of Large File Support if your OS supports it. Here's a general overview of mexnc.

SNCTOOLS

SNCTOOLS is a set of m-files that sit on top of MEXNC. You might find them a little easier to use in day-to-day activities than the mex-file itself. Check the tutorial for some examples. SNCTOOLS can use any of three backends for it's I/O engine; MEXNC, java, or if you have R2008b, MATLAB itself. Please check the README for details.

And the NetCDF Toolbox?

Completely unsupported. It's available here as a download, but I didn't write it and so I can't answer any questions about it. Yes, really. If you download it, you are on your own. You have to have MEXNC in order to use the NetCDF Toolbox.

So What Is/Was MEXCDF?

MEXCDF was the original name for the mex-file interface. Well, actually it used to be "mexcdf53". When the NetCDF-3 API was incorporated into the mex-file, it was suggested that "mexnc" would be a much less confusing name for the mex-file itself, and so a name change was instituted. MEXCDF remains as the umbrella name for this sourceforge site and all the m-file software related to the mex-file.


John Evans:
Email address is john.g.evans.ne@gmail.com