NCO(1) General Commands Manual NCO(1)
NAME
NCO - netCDF Operators
SYNTAX
operator [ options] input-files output-file
DESCRIPTION
The netCDF Operators, or NCO are a suite of programs known as operators. Each operator is a standalone, command line program which is exe-
cuted at the UNIX shell-level like, e.g., ls or mkdir. The operators take netCDF (<http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf>) files as
input, then perform a set of operations (e.g., deriving new data, averaging, hyperslabbing, or metadata manipulation) and produce a netCDF
file as output. The operators are primarily designed to aid manipulation and analysis of gridded scientific data. The single command
style of NCO allows users to manipulate and analyze files interactively and with simple scripts, avoiding the overhead (and some of the
power) of a higher level programming environment. The NCO User's Guide illustrates their use with examples from the field of climate mod-
eling and analysis.
The available operators are:
ncap2, netCDF Arithmetic Processor
ncatted, netCDF Attribute Editor
ncbo, netCDF Binary Operator (includes ncadd, ncsubtract, ncmultiply, ncdivide)
ncea, netCDF Ensemble Averager
ncecat, netCDF Ensemble Concatenator
ncflint, netCDF File Interpolator
ncks, netCDF Kitchen Sink
ncpdq, netCDF Permute Dimensions Quickly, Pack Data Quietly
ncra, netCDF Record Averager
ncrcat, netCDF Record Concatenator
ncrename, netCDF Renamer
ncwa, netCDF Weighted Averager.
(Note that the "averagers" are misnamed because they perform many non-linear operations as well, e.g., total, minimum, maximum, RMS).
The operators are as general as netCDF itself: there are no restrictions on the contents of the netCDF file(s) used as input. NCO's inter-
nal routines are completely dynamic and impose no limit on the number or sizes of dimensions, variables, and files. NCO is designed to be
used both interactively and with large batch jobs. The default operator behavior is often sufficient for everyday needs, and there are
numerous command line (i.e., run-time) options, for special cases. NCO works well on all modern operating systems.
AUTHOR
NCO manual pages written by Charlie Zender and Brian Mays.
REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs to <http://sf.net/bugs/?group_id=3331>.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 1995-2010 Charlie Zender
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICU-
LAR PURPOSE.
SEE ALSO
The full documentation for NCO is maintained as a Texinfo manual called the NCO User's Guide. Because NCO is mathematical in nature, the
documentation includes TeX-intensive portions not viewable on character-based displays. Hence the only complete and authoritative versions
of the NCO User's Guide are the PDF (recommended), DVI, and Postscript versions at <http://nco.sf.net/nco.pdf>,
<http://nco.sf.net/nco.dvi>, and <http://nco.sf.net/nco.ps>, respectively. HTML and XML versions are available at
<http://nco.sf.net/nco.html> and <http://nco.sf.net/nco.xml>, respectively.
If the info and NCO programs are properly installed at your site, the command
info nco
should give you access to the complete manual, except for the TeX-intensive portions.
ncap2(1), ncatted(1), ncbo(1), ncdiff(1), ncea(1), ncecat(1), ncflint(1), ncks(1), nco(1), ncpdq(1), ncra(1), ncrcat(1), ncrename(1),
ncwa(1)
HOMEPAGE
The NCO homepage at <http://nco.sf.net> contains more information.
NCO(1)