CDMS is an easy to use interface to read in data from multiple binary formats, such as NetCDF, HDF, Grads/GRIB (with a control file), PP, DRS (special build need), ...

CDMS is also an OpenDAP client, you can access OpenDAP served data by typing the URL instead of the file name

In this example we will open a file contained in your cdat distribution under the sample_data directory and read the variable named 'clt' contained in it.

# Import the cdms module and the sys module
import cdms,sys

# Construct the string containing the path to the data_file
file_name=sys.prefix+'/sample_data/clt.nc'

# open the file with the cdms interface
file=cdms.open(file_name)

# Read the variable "clt" contained in the file
# and load it in memory
clt=file('clt')

# Close the file now that we don't need it anymore
file.close()