Thanks Robert.
raster has been a great tool for me and others working on the same problem.

I had tried what you suggested that which lead to the error message. see
below

  seafile<-"HadSST2_1850on.nc"

  nc = open.ncdf(seafile, write = FALSE)
  names(nc)
 [1] "id"           "ndims"        "natts"        "unlimdimid"   "filename"
    "varid2Rindex" "writable"     "dim"          "nvars"
[10] "var"
  TIME<-get.var.ncdf(nc,'time')
  SST<-get.var.ncdf(nc,'sst')
  lon<-get.var.ncdf(nc,'lon')
  lat<-get.var.ncdf(nc,'lat')
  dim(SST)
[1]   72   36 1927

 b<-brick(seafile,varname='sst')
Loading required package: RNetCDF
Error in .rasterObjectFromCDF(x, type = objecttype, band = band, ...) :
  You need to install the RNetCDF package first

> sessionInfo()
R version 2.11.1 (2010-05-31)
x86_64-apple-darwin9.8.0

locale:
[1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

other attached packages:
[1] ncdf_1.6          uncompress_1.33   R.utils_1.4.4     R.oo_1.7.3
 R.methodsS3_1.2.0 zoo_1.6-3         maps_2.1-4        raster_1.3-4
[9] sp_0.9-66

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] grid_2.11.1    lattice_0.18-8 tools_2.11.1


On Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 4:02 PM, Robert J. Hijmans <r.hijmans@gmail.com>wrote:

> Steven,
>
> The current version of raster (1.3-11 on CRAN) uses 'ncdf' rather then
> 'RNetCDF'.  The 'ncdf' package is available for OSX.
>
> Then, for a single layer:
>
> r = raster('file.nc')
> r = raster('file.nc', band=10)
>
> For all layers:
>
> b = brick('file.nc')
>
> You may get a warning about the variable that was selected. You can
> avoid that by explicitly setting the variable you want with the
> varname="  " argument, e.g.,
>
> b = brick('file.nc', varname='temperature')
>
> Hth, Robert
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 12:14 PM, steven mosher <moshersteven@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > I'm looking for some examples of how to read a NetCDF file with raster
> > directly. The manual is a bit
> > terse on the matter. The dats in question is a 3D (lon,lat,time) 72*36,
> 161
> > "bands"
> >
> > On the MAC I get a request to load RNetCDF, which is not available in
> > Binary. I found a few mails
> > on geting RNetCDF onto the MAC (and udunits as well)
> >
> > Failing a direct method, I suppose, I can just read the file into an
> array
> > and the turn that into a multi band
> > raster..
> >
> > TIA
> >
> >        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > R-sig-Geo mailing list
> > R-sig-Geo@stat.math.ethz.ch
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-geo
> >
>

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