Why are variables still limited in size?
While most platforms support a 64-bit file offset, many platforms only support a 32-bit size for allocated memory blocks, array sizes, and memory pointers. In C developers jargon, these platforms have a 64-bit off_t type for file offsets, but a 32-bit size_t type for size of arrays. Changing netCDF to assume the 64-bit size_t available on 64-bit platforms would make it suitable only for 64-bit platforms. We expect to be able to remove remaining variable size constraints with netCDF-4 using the HDF5 format, but that won’t be released until mid-2005.
