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6.3 NetCDF-3 Classic and 64-Bit Offset Data Types

NetCDF-3 classic and 64-bit offset files support 6 atomic data types, and none of the user defined datatype introduced in NetCDF-4.

The following table gives the netCDF-3 external data types and the corresponding type constants for defining variables in the C interface:

Type C #define Bits


byte NC_BYTE 8


char NC_CHAR 8


short NC_SHORT 16


int NC_INT 32


float NC_FLOAT 32


double NC_DOUBLE 64

The first column gives the netCDF external data type, which is the same as the CDL data type. The next column gives the corresponding C pre-processor macro for use in netCDF functions (the pre-processor macros are defined in the netCDF C header-file netcdf.h). The last column gives the number of bits used in the external representation of values of the corresponding type.