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getfilevartypes

Returns the types of the named variables stored in the given supported file.

Prototype

	function getfilevartypes (
		thefile [1] : file,    
		var         : string   
	)

	return_val [*] :  string

Arguments

thefile

Reference to a file. It is created using addfile or addfiles. Thus, it must be a supported file format.

var

A list of variable names in file referenced by thefile.

Description

Given a file referenced by thefile, this function returns the type of each variable name listed. A missing value is returned for any variable name that doesn't exist in the file.

See Also

typeof, short2flt, byte2flt

Examples

Example 1

Open a netCDF file, retrieve all the variables names, and returns the type of each variable.

  f = addfile("$NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/data/cdf/Ustorm.cdf","r")

  varNames = getfilevarnames(f)           ; all variable names
  varTypes = getfilevartypes(f,varNames)  ; each variable type

  print("Type of '" + varNames + "' is " + varTypes)

The above will produce the following output:

(0)     Type of 'reftime' is character
(1)     Type of 'lon' is float
(2)     Type of 'lat' is float
(3)     Type of 'timestep' is integer
(4)     Type of 'u' is float

Example 2

Open a netCDF file and determine the type of a specified variable. If it is of type "float" or "double" then read directly. If it is of type "short" or "byte" use short2flt or byte2flt functions to unpack the data.

  load "$NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/nclscripts/csm/contributed.ncl"

  f = addfile("foo.nc", "r")

  varType = getfilevartypes(f,"SST") 

  if (varType.eq."float" .or. varType.eq."double") then
      sst = f->SST
  end if

  if (varType.eq."short") then
      sst = short2flt(f->SST )
  end if