cdfmerge −− merge two or more common data format files into one
cdfmerge file1 suffix1 file2 suffix2 ...
Cdfmerge merges two or more common data format files into one. It accepts only files with a single variable slice, and sends the merged file to the standard output. The merged file contains a single variable slice containing the variable fields from all of the input files. The static slice is treated similarly. In order to avoid possible naming conflicts, a suffix is appended to each field name. The suffix (one for each file included in the merger) is specified by the user on the command line. Index parameters also have the appropriate suffix added.
In the event that a name conflict between fields does occur, two things can happen. If the conflicting fields have the same total size both fields are silently included. The second field is renamed by adding "." to its name. This is done iteratively so that multiple conflicting fields would have ".", "..", "...", etc. added. Dimension names are not renamed, so if the conflicting fields are index fields, the first takes priority. If the conflicting fields have different sizes, cdfmerge exits with an error message. The purpose of this is to avoid the possible creation of files with inconsistent dimension sizes.
Inconsistent bad data limits present a potential problem when merging files. Cdfmerge handles this problem by setting the bad data limit to the default value. Bad data values in all fields are made consistent with the new bad data limit. One potential problem with this is that conversion to integer format may result in overflows on revised bad data values.
Parameters from all input files are included in the output, but comments are discarded. A new comment section is begun, with the input files and suffixes listed.