Improvement of class hierarchy

Description:
    - Moved class Attribute to be derived from class H5Location instead of
      IdComponent because an attribute id can be used as loc_id in C APIs.
    - Copied wrappers of H5A APIs in H5Location into H5Object because H5A
      functions do not take an attribute id as loc_id.  The original wrappers
      will be deprecated in future releases.
    - Revised comments
Platforms tested:
    Linux/32 2.6 (jam)
    Linux/64 (platypus)
    Darwin (osx1010test)

1 files changed, 24 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/c++/src/H5Object.h b/c++/src/H5Object.h
index fa9e8a9..b118bb8 100644
--- a/c++/src/H5Object.h
+++ b/c++/src/H5Object.h
@@ -37,6 +37,30 @@ namespace H5 {
 //  Inheritance: H5Location -> IdComponent
 class H5_DLLCPP H5Object : public H5Location {
    public:
+        // Creates an attribute for the specified object
+        // PropList is currently not used, so always be default.
+        Attribute createAttribute(const char* name, const DataType& type, const DataSpace& space, const PropList& create_plist = PropList::DEFAULT) const;
+        Attribute createAttribute(const H5std_string& name, const DataType& type, const DataSpace& space, const PropList& create_plist = PropList::DEFAULT) const;
+
+        // Given its name, opens the attribute that belongs to this object.
+        Attribute openAttribute(const char* name) const;
+        Attribute openAttribute(const H5std_string& name) const;
+
+        // Given its index, opens the attribute that belongs to this object.
+        Attribute openAttribute(const unsigned int idx) const;
+
+        // Checks whether the named attribute exists for this object.
+        bool attrExists(const char* name) const;
+        bool attrExists(const H5std_string& name) const;
+
+        // Renames the named attribute of this object to a new name.
+        void renameAttr(const char* oldname, const char* newname) const;
+        void renameAttr(const H5std_string& oldname, const H5std_string& newname) const;
+
+        // Removes the named attribute from this object.
+        void removeAttr(const char* name) const;
+        void removeAttr(const H5std_string& name) const;
+
         // Gets the name of this HDF5 object, i.e., Group, DataSet, or
         // DataType.
         ssize_t getObjName(char *obj_name, size_t buf_size = 0) const;