The Common Data Format (CDF) is a self-describing data format for the storage and manipulation of scalar and multidimensional data in a platform- and discipline-independent fashion. When one first hears the term "Common Data Format" one intuitively thinks of data formats in the traditional (i.e. messy/convoluted storage of data on disk or tape) sense of the word. Although CDF has its own internal self describing format, it consists of more than just a data format. CDF is a scientific data management package (known as the "CDF Library") which allows programmers and application developers to manage and manipulate scalar, vector, and multi-dimensional data arrays. The irony of the term "FORMAT" is that the actual data format which CDF utilizes is completely transparent to the user and accessible through a consistent set of interface (known as the "CDF Interface") routines. Therefore, programmers are not burdened with performing low level I/O's to physically format and unformat the data file. This is all done for them automatically.

Initialize enviroment variables by running cdf-init-bourne.sh, cdf-init-cshell.sh or cdf-init-bash.sh before running.