CODEWITHSUNDEEP
netcdfncks
David
David

Reputation: 835

Extract text from variable in netCDF file using ncks

I am trying to extract the variable "flash_lon" from a file and output to a text file in plain text - using ncks.

When I use the following command, it displays the variables I need on screen and outputs to a file.

ncks -v flash_lon -x file.nc output.txt

However, the file is not in readable text. In the documentation for ncks, it says that "ncks will print netCDF data in ASCII format ".

What do I need to do in order to simply extract the variable to text? It is just text. I have attached an image below showing the data in the command line working, surely there must be a way to get it to output. I am on Windows 10.

enter image description here

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1488

Answers (1)

ClimateUnboxed
ClimateUnboxed

Reputation: 8107

If you have ncdump and sed you can output just the data only like this

 ncdump -v flash_lon file.nc | sed -e '1,/data:/d' -e '$d' > output.txt

A solution I use frequently and found here:

https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/mailing_lists/archives/netcdfgroup/2011/msg00317.html

If you don't want even the first lines with the variable name, you can cut those with tail:

 ncdump -v flash_lon file.nc | sed -e '1,/data:/d' -e '$d' | tail -n +3 > output.txt

Upvotes: 2

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