<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN"> <html> <head> <title>Property List Interface (H5P)</title> </head> <body> <h1>Property List Interface (H5P)</h1> <h2>1. Introduction</h2> <p>The property list (a.k.a., template) interface provides a mechanism for default named arguments for a C function interface. A property list is a collection of name/value pairs which can be passed to various other HDF5 functions to control features that are typically unimportant or whose default values are usually used. <p>For instance, file creation needs to know various things such as the size of the user-block at the beginning of the file, or the size of various file data structures. Wrapping this information in a property list simplifies the API by reducing the number of arguments to <code>H5Fcreate()</code>. <h2>2. General Property List Operations</h2> <p>Property lists follow the same create/open/close paradigm as the rest of the library. <dl> <dt><code>hid_t H5Pcreate (H5P_class_t <em>class</em>)</code> <dd>A new property list can be created as an instance of some property list class. The new property list is initialized with default values for the specified class. The classes are: <br><br> <dl> <dt><code>H5P_FILE_CREATE</code> <dd>Properties for file creation. See <a href="Files.html">H5F</a> for details about the file creation properties. <dt><code>H5P_FILE_ACCESS</code> <dd>Properties for file access. See <a href="Files.html">H5F</a> for details about the file creation properties. <dt><code>H5P_DATASET_CREATE</code> <dd>Properties for dataset creation. See <a href="Datasets.html">H5D</a> for details about dataset creation properties. <dt><code>H5P_DATASET_XFER</code> <dd>Properties for raw data transfer. See <a href="Datasets.html">H5D</a> for details about raw data transfer properties. </dl> <br><br> <dt><code>hid_t H5Pcopy (hid_t <em>plist</em>)</code> <dd>A property list can be copied to create a new property list. The new property list has the same properties and values as the original property list. <br><br> <dt><code>herr_t H5Pclose (hid_t <em>plist</em>)</code> <dd>All property lists should be closed when the application is finished accessing them. This frees resources used by the property list. <br><br> <dt><code>H5P_class_t H5Pget_class (hid_t <em>plist</em>)</code> <dd>The class of which the property list is a member can be obtained by calling this function. The property list classes are defined above for <code>H5Pcreate()</code>. </dl> <hr> <address><a href="mailto:matzke@llnl.gov">Robb Matzke</a></address> <address><a href="mailto:koziol@ncsa.uiuc.edu">Quincey Koziol</a></address> <!-- Created: Tue Feb 10 17:06:58 PST 1998 --> <!-- hhmts start --> Last modified: Tue Feb 10 17:26:41 PST 1998 <!-- hhmts end --> </body> </html>