NCECAT(1)

💖 NCECAT(1) — netCDF Ensemble Concatenator 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to ncecat, section 1 of the General Commands Manual. she glues a whole lil ensemble of netCDF files into ONE file and honestly? she ate. 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

ncecat — netCDF Ensemble Concatenator. that's it, that's the whole job description, and she's iconic for it. 👑

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🌸 SYNTAX 🌸

lowkey a lot going on here but it's giving options, so:

ncecat [-3] [-4] [-5] [-6] [-7] [-A] [--bfr sz_byt][-C][-c] [--cmp
cmp_sng] [--cnk_byt sz_byt][--cnk_csh sz_byt][--cnk_dmn nm,sz_lmn]
[--cnk_map map] [--cnk_min sz_byt] [--cnk_plc plc] [--cnk_scl sz_lmn][-D
dbg_lvl] [-d dim,[ min][,[ max]]] [-F] [--fl_fmt=fmt] [-G gpe_dsc] [-g
grp[,...]]  [--gaa att_name= att_val]] [--gad att1[,...]]  [--gag] [-H]
[-h] [--hdr_pad sz_byt][--hpss_try] [-L dfl_lvl] [-l path] [-M] [--mrd]
[--msa] [-n loop] [--no_cll_msr] [--no_frm_trm] [--no_tmp_fl] [-O] [-p
path] [--qnt var1[, var2[,...]]= prc]] [--qnt_alg alg_nm] [-R] [-r]
[--ram_all] [-t thr_nbr] [-u ulm_nm] [--uio] [--unn] [-v var[,...]]  [-X
box] [-x] input-files output-file

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so ncecat concatenates an arbitrary number of input files into a single output file. periodt. ✨

the way she does it? input files are glued together by creating a record dimension in the output file. input files must be the same size. each input file gets stored consecutively as a single record in the output file. and every variable (except coordinate variables, we'll get to them, don't worry) in each input file becomes one record in the same variable in the output file.

coordinate variables? not concatenated, bestie. they're simply copied from the first input file to the output-file. so basically the size of the output file is the sum of the sizes of the input files. math is mathing. 🧮💅

okay imagine this: five realizations, 85a.nc, 85b.nc,... 85e.nc of 1985 predictions from the same climate model. then

ncecat 85?.nc 85_ens.nc

glues the individual realizations together into the single file, 85_ens.nc. slay. 🌈

if an input variable was dimensioned [ lat, lon], it will have dimensions [ record, lat, lon] in the output file. no cap.

⚠️ a restriction of ncecat: the hyperslabs of the processed variables must be the same from file to file. normally this means all the input files are the same size, and contain data on different realizations of the same variables. so keep them consistent, queen. 🙈

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🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

consider a model experiment which generated five realizations of one year of data, say 1985. you can imagine that the experimenter slightly perturbs the initial conditions of the problem before generating each new solution. (chaos! love that for them. 🌪️)

assume each file contains all twelve months (a seasonal cycle) of data and we want to produce a single file containing all the seasonal cycles. here the numeric filename suffix denotes the experiment number (not the month, iykyk):

ncecat 85_01.nc 85_02.nc 85_03.nc 85_04.nc 85_05.nc 85.nc
ncecat 85_0[1-5].nc 85.nc
ncecat -n 5,2,1 85_01.nc 85.nc

these three commands produce identical answers. 🤯 the output file, 85.nc, is five times the size as a single input-file. it contains 60 months of data (which might or might not be stored in the record dimension, depending on the input files). 60 months!! that's five years of seasonal cycles living in one file. main character energy fr fr. 👑

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💜 AUTHOR 💜

NCO manual pages written by Charlie Zender and originally formatted by Brian Mays. legends, honestly. 🫶

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🍓 REPORTING BUGS 🍓

found a bug? report bugs to <http://sf.net/bugs/?group_id=3331>. do it kindly bestie, the devs are people too. 💖

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💀 COPYRIGHT 💀

Copyright © 1995-present Charlie Zender

This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

bestie this is serious — NO warranty, like not even the implied ones. dramatic but true. 😭

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

the full documentation for NCO is maintained as a Texinfo manual called the NCO Users 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 Users 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.

also go read these, they're the whole friend group:

• ncap2(1), ncatted(1), ncbo(1), ncclimo(1), nces(1), ncecat(1), ncflint(1), ncz2psx(1), ncks(1), nco(1), ncpdq(1), ncra(1), ncrcat(1), ncremap(1), ncrename(1), ncwa(1)

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🌈 HOMEPAGE 🌈

the NCO homepage at <http://nco.sf.net> contains more information. go touch grass? no. go read the homepage. 🌸

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and that's the whole page bestie!! ncecat(1), from the General Commands Manual, section 1 — she concatenates ensembles and she does it flawlessly. now go glue your files together. mwah. 💅✨🎀