[Numpy-discussion] Data file format choice.

[Jeff Whitaker]

Gary Pajer wrote:
> It's time for me to select a data format.
>
> My data are (more or less) spectra ( a couple of thousand samples), 
> six channels, each channel running around 10 Hz, collecting for a 
> minute or so. Plus all the settings on the instrument.
>
> I don't see any significant differences between netCDF4 and HDF5.   
Gary:  netCDF4 is just a thin wrapper on top of HDF5 1.8 - think of it 
as a higher level API.
> Similarly, I don't see significant differences between pytables and 
> h5py.  Does one play better with numpy?  
pytables has been around longer and is well-tested, has nice pythonic 
features, but files you write with it may not be readable by C or 
fortran clients.  h5py works only with python 2.5/2.6, and writes 
'vanilla' hdf5 files readable by anybody.
> What are the best numpy solutions for netCDF4?

There's only one that I know of - http://code.google.com/p/netcdf4-python.

-Jeff

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