The pybufr_ecmwf module provides functionality to read and write files in 
BUFR format. 
The API consists of several layers:
-the raw/bare c API that connects python to the fortran library
-an intermediate python API around this raw layer
-[not finished yet] a high level API which should allow a pythonic object 
 oriented usage

For examples on its usage you can take a look at the programs in the
example_programs directory in the source code.
The run_example_program.sh shell script allows easy testing of all of
these programs. 
All needed test data files are provided in the test/testdata directory.

examples for using the raw/bare API are:
-example_for_using_ecmwfbufr_for_decoding.py
-example_for_using_ecmwfbufr_for_encoding.py

examples for using the intermediate python API 
-example_for_using_bufrinterface_ecmwf_for_decoding.py
-example_for_using_bufrinterface_ecmwf_for_encoding.py

example for using additional tools:

an example how the pb routines can be used (not portable at the moment,
 needs more testing!)
-example_for_using_pb_routines.py

an example how the raw_bufr_file class can be used to replace the pb routines
-example_for_using_rawbufrfile.py

an example of a tool that can be used to verify the internal consistency 
of BUFR table files
-verify_bufr_tables.py

example tools to count the number of BUFR messages in a file,
and to extract the data category of the BUFR messages in a file
-bufr_count_msgs.py
-bufr_extract_data_category.py

an example tool to demonstrate how to create a set of BUFR tables from
scratch, and another tool that uses these tables for encoding:
-create_bufr_tables.py
-use_custom_tables_for_encoding.py

an example tool to demonstrate how to extract the data from a BUFR file
and convert it to ASCII of CSV format.
-bufr_to_ascii.py

In case your BUFR files are mixed and have several message types in a
single file, it is preferable to sort them first before converting
them to ascii. To do this you can use the script:
-sort_bufr_msgs.py

If you have any questions or requests feel free to contact me by email.

Jos de Kloe, 8-Dec-2013.
