[ferret_users] maximum size of variable (again)

[Ryo Furue <furue@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Ferreters,

I found a discussion in the mailing list (from 2001), which seems to be saying that the maximum size of a single variable which doesn't include a record dimension is 2 GiB.

Then I'm puzzled.  My variables all have I, J, K, and M dimensions with I=1:500, J=1:400, K=1:67, and M=1:36.  All double precision.  So each variable is 3.6 GiB.

I managed to create netCDF files that each include a single variable via

repeat/k=1:67 (save/append/klimits=1:67/k=`k` myvar)

The k-size of myvar is 1.

ncdump -h says

dimensions:
XU = 500 ;
YV = 400 ;
ZT = 67 ;
bnds = 2 ;
FREQ_AX = 36 ;

(freq_ax is the name of my ensemble dimension.)  As you can see, there is no record dimension.  If the last dimension were a record dimension, the listing would say

FREQ_AX = UNLIMITED ; // (36 currently)

So, somehow I managed to create such datasets as this.

But then, I wanted to put two such variables into one file:

set data myvar1.nc

set data myvar2.nc

SPAWN rm result.nc

repeat/m=1:36 (save/append/mlimits=1:36 var1[d=1], var2[d=2])

This program fails with

N