Data type

NetCDF Variable Data Types

The following table gives the netCDF external data types defined in CDF-1 and CDF-1 and CDF-2 and the corresponding type constants for defining variables in the python interface. All these data types have direct numpy quivalent.

Type	NC Constants	Bits	Intent of use	Numpy Equivalent
char	NC_CHAR	8	text data	np.int8 or ‘i1’
byte	NC_BYTE	8	1-byte integer*	np.int8 or ‘i1’
short	NC_SHORT	16	2-byte signed integer	np.int16 or ‘i2’
int	NC_INT	32	4-byte signed integer	np.int32 or ‘i4’
float	NC_FLOAT	32	4-byte floating point number	np.float32 or ‘f4’
double	NC_DOUBLE	64	8-byte real number in double precision	np.float64 or ‘f8’

Additional data types supported in CDF-5. format:

Type	C #define	Bits	Intent of use	Numpy Equivalent
unsigned byte	NC_UBYTE	8	unsigned 1-byte integer	np.uint8 or ‘u1’
unsigned short	NC_USHORT	16	unsigned 2-byte integer	np.uint16 or ‘u2’
unsigned int	NC_UINT	32	unsigned 4-byte integer	np.uint32 or ‘u4’
long long	NC_INT64	64	signed 8-byte integer	np.int64 or ‘i8’
unsigned long long	NC_UINT64	64	unsigned 8-byte integer	np.uint64 or ‘u8’