Re: [ferret_users] descriptor file

[Ansley Manke <ansley.b.manke@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi Raffa,
I don't see a way around this for the moment, short of writing files 
with multiple timesteps to create fewer files.  You could use Ferret's 
SAVE/APPEND command to put the data from multiple timesteps into a 
single file or use NCO operators to combine files.

The 3-character file extension is hard-coded into the internal Ferret 
code that handles the descriptor datasets. However since we allow up to 
5000 step files in a descriptor dataset, I don't see why we shouldn't 
allow for that many files given by a descriptor file using the 
S_NUM_OF_FILES method of giving a set of files. It looks like just a 
couple of short code changes.
I'll make that change and it should be in the next Ferret release.

Ansley


On 9/11/2012 10:10 AM, Raffaele wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a series of 1501 netcdf files. I'd like to put them together
> using a descriptor file.
>
> I have renamed them with ending .001, .002 but I had to separate them
> into two groups as Ferret does not accept a four-digits extension.
>
> I'm trying to put two entries in the descriptor file like this:
>
>
> $STEPFILE_RECORD
>     s_filename           = '1stgroup_file.nc.001',
>     S_AUX_SET_NUM        = 0,
>     S_START              = 1,
>     S_END                = 600,
>     S_DELTA              = 1,
>     S_NUM_OF_FILES       = 600,
>     S_REGVARFLAG         = ' ',
>   $END
> ************************************************
>   $STEPFILE_RECORD
>     s_filename           = '2ndgroup_file.nc.001',
>     S_AUX_SET_NUM        = 0,
>     S_START              = 601,
>     S_END                = 1501,
>     S_DELTA              = 1,
>     S_NUM_OF_FILES       = 901,
>     S_REGVARFLAG         = ' ',
>   $END
>
>
> it seems to accept it but when I try to plot a time-series I get:
>
> No such file or directory (OPeNDAP/netCDF Error code 2)
>
>   because it jumps from file 600 of the first group to file 601 of the
> second group so it can find only a total of 901 files.
>
> It must be something simple but I can't see it.
>
> Thanks for any help
>
> Raffa