raster:::.rasterObjectFromCDF, was: [raster] problem with large netCDF file

summary: what are the semantics of 'band', 'level', and 'lvar' in
`raster:::.rasterObjectFromCDF` (et al)?

details:

https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-geo/2013-February/017441.html

system('ls -alh ./METCRO3D_080101')

-r--r--r-- 1 me mygroup 5.3G Jan  8 11:32 ./METCRO3D_080101

system('ls -alh ./METCRO3D_080101.nc')

lrwxrwxrwx 1 me mygroup 17 Feb 10 13:46 ./METCRO3D_080101.nc -> ./METCRO3D_080101

raster('./METCRO3D_080101', varname='ZF')

...

Error in .local(.Object, ...) : 
  `[...]/METCRO3D_080101' not recognised as a supported file format.

https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-geo/2013-February/017454.html

For now, the workaround you can use is this function

raster:::.rasterObjectFromCDF(filename, varname='', band=NA,
type='RasterLayer', lvar=3, level=0, warn=TRUE, ...)

I'm apparently not understanding the semantics of 'band', and possibly
'level', and 'lvar' (all of which I'm guessing `raster` is designed to
protect me from :-) As noted above, my datavar='ZF' of interest is in
netCDF='./METCRO3D_080101', which is

system(sprintf('ncdump -h %s', template.raw.fp))

netcdf METCRO3D_080101 {
dimensions:
        TSTEP = UNLIMITED ; // (25 currently)

TSTEP is the time dimension

        DATE-TIME = 2 ;
        LAY = 24 ;

LAY is the vertical dimension

        VAR = 17 ;
        ROW = 299 ;
        COL = 459 ;

ROW and COL are the horizontal dimensions

variables:

... followed by 10 datavars (none of which are coordinate variables),
then ...

        float ZF(TSTEP, LAY, ROW, COL) ;
                ZF:long_name = "ZF              " ;
                ZF:units = "M               " ;
                ZF:var_desc = "full-layer height above ground" ;

... followed by 7 more datavars (none of which are coordinate
variables), then many global attributes (of which this convention,
IOAPI, is inordinately fond :-) So I tried

raster:::.rasterObjectFromCDF(

+   './METCRO3D_080101', varname='ZF',
+   band=11,  # datavar=ZF is 11th reported by `ncdump -h`
+   level=1,  # "4th dimension variable" in (TSTEP, LAY, ROW, COL)
+   lvar=2,   # "3rd dimension variable" in (TSTEP, LAY, ROW, COL)
+   type='RasterLayer', warn=TRUE)
class       : RasterLayer 
band        : 11 
dimensions  : 299, 459, 137241  (nrow, ncol, ncell)
resolution  : 1, 1  (x, y)
extent      : 0.5, 459.5, 0.5, 299.5  (xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax)
coord. ref. : +proj=longlat +datum=WGS84 +ellps=WGS84 +towgs84=0,0,0 
data source : ./METCRO3D_080101 
names       : ZF 
z-value     : 11 
zvar        : ZF 
level       : 1 

But if I do

system('mv ./METCRO3D_080101 ./METCRO3D_080101.nc')
raster('./METCRO3D_080101.nc', varname='ZF')

I get

class       : RasterLayer 
band        : 1 
dimensions  : 299, 459, 137241  (nrow, ncol, ncell)
resolution  : 1, 1  (x, y)
extent      : 0.5, 459.5, 0.5, 299.5  (xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax)
coord. ref. : +proj=longlat +datum=WGS84 +ellps=WGS84 +towgs84=0,0,0 
data source : [...]/METCRO3D_080101.nc 
names       : ZF 
z-value     : 1 
zvar        : ZF 
level       : 1 

which is almost the same, but not quite. It seems my 'band' value is
wrong, so I'd like to know how to determine the appropriate value; I'd
also like to know if my comments above correctly reflect the semantics
of 'level' and 'lvar'. Unfortunately I'm not quite getting this from
raster.pdf, and the source for raster:::.rasterObjectFromCDF seems quite
inscrutable (YMMV :-)

TIA, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche at pobox.com>