printVarSummary

Prints a summary of a variable's information.

Prototype

	procedure printVarSummary (
		data       
	)

Arguments

A variable of any type and dimensionality.

Description

The printVarSummary procedure displays the information associated with a variable. The information includes type, attributes, dimensions sizes, named dimensions (if present), and a summary of coordinate data (if present).

printVarSummary is often used in scripts to minimize printed output, because it does not print out individual values like the print procedure.

As of version 6.0.0, when applied to a file type variable, printVarSummary prints only a short summary of the contents of the file, listing the number of global attributes, dimensions, and variables. To see the complete contents of the file, use the print procedure.

Note: if you want to print information about a variable on a file, do not use this procedure, as it will copy the whole variable into memory. Instead, use printFileVarSummary.

See Also

print, printFileVarSummary

Examples

Example 1

Assume "T2m.nc" is a netCDF file with a variable called T, and that T has attributes and some coordinate variables called time, lat, and lon. Then:

  f = addfile ("T2m.nc", "r")
  T = f->T
  printVarSummary (T)

would yield the following output:

Variable: T
Type: float
Total Size: 72192 bytes
            18048 values
Number of Dimensions: 3
Dimensions and sizes:   [time | 1] x [lat | 94] x [lon | 192]
Coordinates: 
            time: [197901..197901]
            lat: [-88.54195..88.54195]
            lon: [ 0..358.125]
Number Of Attributes: 4
  units :       K
  short_name :  T2m
  long_name :   Temperature (2m)
  _FillValue :  1e+36

Example 2

To print a short summary of the contents of the file opened in Example 1, call:

  printVarSummary (f)

which yields:

Variable: f
Type: file
File path: ~/data/T2m.nc
Number of global attributes: 0
Number of dimensions: 3
Number of variables: 5

For more detail, including dimension names and sizes, attribute names and values, and complete information about each variable, use the print procedure.