@pnsaevik If the approach we adopt in scipp could be ported to xarray you would be able to to something like (assuming that the ragged array representation you have in mind is "list of lists"):

```python data = my_load_netcdf(...) # list of lists

assume 'x' is the dimension of the nested lists

bin_edges = sc.Variable(dims=['x'], values=[0.1,0.3,0.5,0.7,0.9]) realigned = sc.realign(data, {'x':bin_edges}) filtered = realigned['x', 1:3].copy() my_store_netcdf(filtered.unaligned, ...) ``` Basically, we have slicing for the "realigned" wrapper. It performs a filter operation when copied.

Edit 2021: Above example is very outdated, we have cleaned up the mechanism, see https://scipp.github.io/user-guide/binned-data/binned-data.html.