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International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS):     Release 2.4
README for http://icoads.noaa.gov/software/                   22 September 2007
=======================================================================<README>

Document Revision Information (previous version: 16 May 2006): Minor updates
for Release 2.4.

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Software is provided in this directory to assist users in unpacking and using
the most commonly used ICOADS packed-binary and ascii data products (Table 1).
These programs have been designed to be widely portable, but some modifications
still may be required for proper operation on a given computer, because of
differences in Fortran and operating system characteristics.  Table 2 lists
software also available in this directory related to reading or writing Long
Marine Reports (LMR), as discussed in detail in <soft_lmr>.  Table 3 lists
miscellaneous additional software, including to read NCEP Real-time (NRT)
Marine Observations and Release 1 Compressed Marine Reports (CMR).

Older versions of programs, including all original Release 1, supp. H software,
and access software customized for specific computer systems (e.g., Sun, VAX,
PC), are available in the "other" subdirectory:
     http://icoads.noaa.gov/software/other/

Detailed software documentation (s-doc) appears as comments at the top of each
software file.  In the s-doc, curly brackets ({}) are used as a notational
device to enclose the names of programs or accompanying software libraries,
and also the names of subprograms within the programs or libraries.  For
example, {date.f} refers to a Fortran 77 library and {date,time} refers to two
"user-interface" routines that make up {date.f}.  "User-interface" routines
are those routines within a library that are intended to be accessed by users;
other routines should not require direct user access or any modifications.
NOTE: The brackets are strictly notational (not part of the actual file name).

In Tables 1-3, filename suffixes with "." (or their absence) indicate:
     ".f"  : Fortran 77 library
     ".c"  : C language library
     ".tar": a multi-file "tarfile" created by the Unix tar command
     none  : Fortran 77 (or 90) program enclosed in Sun Unix shell commands
             (see <soft_lmr> for a discussion of the shell commands, which
             illustrate compilation and execution, and may be removed)


Table 1.  User software to read commonly used products.  An overview of the
2- and 1-degree statistical summary products is given in <stat_doc>.  Format
details are provided in <lmr>, <imma_short>, <msg>, and <mstg>.
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File            Description
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{rdlmrf6}       read and print Long Marine Reports Fixed-length (LMRF6)
{trimqc0.f}     use with {rdlmrf6,rdlmr6,rdimma0} to synthesize QC flags
{trimqc1.f}     use with {trimqc0.f} to apply the QC flags to data (LMRF)
{trimqc2.f}     use with {trimqc0.f} to apply the QC flags to data (IMMA)
{rdimma0}       read and print/write IMMA0 (Fortran 90/77)
{rdmsg1}        read and print Monthly Summary Groups (MSG1)
{rdmstg2}       read and print Monthly Summary Trimmed Groups (MSTG2)
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Table 2.  User software for reading and writing LMR6; object files also are
available, but not listed (see <soft_lmr> for details).
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File            Description
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{date.f}        local system date and time
{ebcasc.f}      fully-reversible mappings from ebcdic to ascii
{gsbytes.c}     bit-string manipulations*
{lmrlib}        tools to assist conversions into LMR6 (units conversions, etc.)
{rdlmr6}        read and print Long Marine Reports (LMR6)
{rptin.f}       blocking/unblocking of variable-length records
{wrlmr6.tar}    software and associated files to help write LMR6
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* Fortran and other language versions of this capability are available at:
     http://dss.ucar.edu/libraries/gbytes/
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Table 3.  Miscellaneous additional software.  
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File            Description
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{qctrf.f}       compute quality control and trimming flags (LMR/IMMA)
{rdnrt}         read and print NCEP Real-time (NRT) Marine Observations*
{rdcmr5}        read and print Compressed Marine Reports (CMR5)**
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* For more information about the NRT data see:
       http://icoads.noaa.gov/nrt.html
** CMR5 format details are provided in Release 1, supp. D.
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