[R-sig-Geo] raster brick from netcdf - specify range

[Tom Hilinski]

Want to read part of a netcdf file into a raster brick. The file (in
ncdf4 order) contains a variable
pre[lon, lat, time]
and those dimensions are: 720, 360, 1356

The following reads in all time layers:
rb <- brick( filename, varname=varname, nl=2 )

> rb
class       : RasterBrick
dimensions  : 360, 720, 259200, 1356  (nrow, ncol, ncell, nlayers)
resolution  : 0.5, 0.5  (x, y)
extent      : -180, 180, -90, 90  (xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax)
z-value     : 12, 1367 (min, max)
varname     : pre

Likewise, I've had no success limiting the read using xmn, xmx, ymn,
ymx, or template. The help page for brick suggests that all these should
work, or at least, it does not seem say that they don't work for netcdf
files.

My workaround requires directly reading the netcdf file, then making a
brick from that array, but when reading finer resolution data, the
memory use and speed could be an issue due to creating 2 objects instead
of 1.

raster version = 2.5-8

I'd appreciate any suggestions about this.