By default, nc_create_empty.m creates netCDF files in the classic format, which has certain size restrictions. Since netCDF 3.6.0 was released, this restriction has been removed, but requires an additional mode to be supplied to the underlying nc_create function. The m-file nc_create_empty.m can take advantage of this with an optional second mode parameter, as the example below describes.

>> mode = bitor ( nc_clobber_mode, nc_64bit_offset_mode );
>> nc_create_empty ( 'test.nc', mode )
>> nc_dump ( 'test.nc' )
netcdf test.nc {



}
    

Note that you cannot see any difference via the output of nc_dump, yet now you can create or grow files in excess of 2 GB.