[svn-r17987] Description:

	Bring r17945:17986 from trunk to revise_chunks branch
	(needs to have autotools files regenerated before testing, those will
be checked in in a few minutes)

3 files changed, 11 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/c++/src/H5CommonFG.cpp b/c++/src/H5CommonFG.cpp
index f9311c6..dd4a419 100644
--- a/c++/src/H5CommonFG.cpp
+++ b/c++/src/H5CommonFG.cpp
@@ -570,8 +570,10 @@ H5std_string CommonFG::getComment( const char* name, size_t bufsize ) const
 
    // if the actual length of the comment is longer than bufsize and bufsize
    // was the default value, i.e., not given by the user, then call
-   // H5Oget_comment_by_name again with the correct value
-   if ((size_t)ret_value > bufsize && bufsize == 256)
+   // H5Oget_comment_by_name again with the correct value.
+   // If the call to H5Oget_comment_by_name returned an error, skip this block
+   // and throw an exception below.
+   if (ret_value >= 0 && (size_t)ret_value > bufsize && bufsize == 256)
    {
 	size_t new_size = ret_value;
 	delete []comment_C;
diff --git a/c++/src/Makefile.in b/c++/src/Makefile.in
index a76df89..420292b 100644
--- a/c++/src/Makefile.in
+++ b/c++/src/Makefile.in
@@ -390,7 +390,7 @@ CHECK_CLEANFILES = *.chkexe *.chklog *.clog
 # Add libtool shared library version numbers to the HDF5 library
 # See libtool versioning documentation online.
 LT_VERS_INTERFACE = 6
-LT_VERS_REVISION = 42
+LT_VERS_REVISION = 44
 LT_VERS_AGE = 0
 
 # Include src directory
diff --git a/c++/test/trefer.cpp b/c++/test/trefer.cpp
index f17f37a..c4ac93b 100644
--- a/c++/test/trefer.cpp
+++ b/c++/test/trefer.cpp
@@ -217,6 +217,12 @@ static void test_reference_obj(void)
 	H5std_string read_comment1 = group.getComment(".", 10);
 	verify_val(read_comment1, write_comment, "Group::getComment", __LINE__, __FILE__);
 
+        // Test that getComment handles failures gracefully
+        try {
+            H5std_string read_comment_tmp = group.getComment(NULL);
+        }
+        catch (Exception E) {} // We expect this to fail
+
 	// Close group
 	group.close();