ncrcat concatenates record variables across an arbitrary number of input files. The final record dimension is by default the sum of the lengths of the record dimensions in the input files.

Input files may vary in size, but each must have a record dimension. The record coordinate, if any, should be monotonic (or else non-fatal warnings may be generated). Hyperslabs of the record dimension which include more than one file are handled correctly. ncra supports the stride argument to the -d hyperslab option for the record dimension only, stride is not supported for non-record dimensions.

ncrcat applies special rules to ARM convention time fields (e.g., time_offset).

Concatenate files 85.nc, 86.nc, 89.nc along the record dimension, and store the results in 8589.nc:

ncrcat 85.nc 86.nc 87.nc 88.nc 89.nc 8589.nc ncrcat 8[56789].nc 8589.nc ncrcat -n 5,2,1 85.nc 8589.nc

Assume the files 85.nc, 86.nc, 89.nc each contain a record coordinate time of length 12 defined such that the third record in 86.nc contains data from March 1986, etc. NCO knows how to hyperslab the record dimension across files. Thus, to concatenate data from December, 1985--February, 1986:

ncrcat -d time,11,13 85.nc 86.nc 87.nc 8512_8602.nc ncrcat -F -d time,12,14 85.nc 86.nc 87.nc 8512_8602.nc

The following uses the stride option to concatenate all the March temperature data from multiple input files into a single output file

ncrcat -F -d time,3,,12 -v temperature 85.nc 86.nc 87.nc 858687_03.nc

Assume the time coordinate is incrementally numbered such that January, 1985 = 1 and December, 1989 = 60. Assuming ?? only expands to the five desired files, the following concatenates June, 1985--June, 1989:

ncrcat -d time,6.,54. ??.nc 8506_8906.nc

If the info and NCO programs are properly installed at your site, the command

info nco

should give you access to the complete manual, except for the TeX-intensive portions.