A User Guide for HDF5

The following documents form a loosely organized user's guide to the HDF5 library.

• HDF5 Files - A guide to the H5F interface.
• Datasets - A guide to the H5D interface.
• Data Types - A guide to the H5T interface.
• Data Spaces - A guide to the H5S interface.
• Groups - A guide to the H5G interface.
• References and Identifiers - A guide to the H5R and H5I interfaces.
• Attributes - A guide to the H5A interface.
• Property Lists - A guide to the H5P interface.
• Error Handling - A guide to the H5E interface.
• Filters - A guide to the H5Z interface.
• Caching - A guide for meta and raw data caching.
• Dataset Chunking - A guide to the issues and pitfalls of dataset chunking.
• Debugging - A guide to debugging HDF5 API calls.
• Environment Variables and Configuration Parameters - A list of HDF5 environment variables and configuration parameters.
• DDL for HDF5 - A DDL in BNF for HDF5.
• Ragged Arrays - A guide to the H5RA interface.   (Experimental)

The following documents form a loosely organized developer's guide to aspects of the HDF5 library. (Some of the following documents may be rather out of date as they were working papers for design goals.)

• Version Numbers - A description of HDF5 version numbers.
• I/O Pipeline - A description of the raw data I/O pipeline.
• Working with External Files - A guide to the use of multiple files with HDF5.
• Large Datasets - A guide to accessing large datasets on small computers.
• Memory Management - A white paper about memory management issues in HDF5.
• Coding Style - A white paper about coding style in the HDF5 library code.
• HDF4/HDF5 Compatibility - A white paper about compatibility issues between HDF4 and HDF5.
• Chunking Performance Study - A white paper describing the HDF5 chunking performance.