<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN"> <html> <head> <title>Property List Interface (H5P)</title> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> <hr> <center> <table border=0 width=98%> <tr><td valign=top align=left> <a href="H5.intro.html">Introduction to HDF5</a> <br> <a href="RM_H5Front.html">HDF5 Reference Manual</a> <br> <a href="index.html">Other HDF5 documents and links</a> <br> <!-- <a href="Glossary.html">Glossary</a><br> --> </td> <td valign=top align=right> And in this document, the <a href="H5.user.html"><strong>HDF5 User's Guide:</strong></a> <br> <a href="Files.html">Files</a> <a href="Datasets.html">Datasets</a> <a href="Datatypes.html">Datatypes</a> <a href="Dataspaces.html">Dataspaces</a> <a href="Groups.html">Groups</a> <br> <a href="References.html">References</a> <a href="Attributes.html">Attributes</a> Property Lists <a href="Errors.html">Error Handling</a> <br> <a href="Filters.html">Filters</a> <a href="Caching.html">Caching</a> <a href="Chunking.html">Chunking</a> <a href="MountingFiles.html">Mounting Files</a> <br> <a href="Performance.html">Performance</a> <a href="Debugging.html">Debugging</a> <a href="Environment.html">Environment</a> <a href="ddl.html">DDL</a> </td></tr> </table> </center> <hr> <h1>The 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> <center> <table border=0 width=98%> <tr><td valign=top align=left> <a href="H5.intro.html">Introduction to HDF5</a> <br> <a href="RM_H5Front.html">HDF5 Reference Manual</a> <br> <a href="index.html">Other HDF5 documents and links</a> <br> <!-- <a href="Glossary.html">Glossary</a><br> --> </td> <td valign=top align=right> And in this document, the <a href="H5.user.html"><strong>HDF5 User's Guide:</strong></a> <br> <a href="Files.html">Files</a> <a href="Datasets.html">Datasets</a> <a href="Datatypes.html">Datatypes</a> <a href="Dataspaces.html">Dataspaces</a> <a href="Groups.html">Groups</a> <br> <a href="References.html">References</a> <a href="Attributes.html">Attributes</a> Property Lists <a href="Errors.html">Error Handling</a> <br> <a href="Filters.html">Filters</a> <a href="Caching.html">Caching</a> <a href="Chunking.html">Chunking</a> <a href="MountingFiles.html">Mounting Files</a> <br> <a href="Performance.html">Performance</a> <a href="Debugging.html">Debugging</a> <a href="Environment.html">Environment</a> <a href="ddl.html">DDL</a> </td></tr> </table> </center> <hr> <address> <a href="mailto:hdfhelp@ncsa.uiuc.edu">HDF Help Desk</a> </address> <!-- Created: Tue Feb 10 17:06:58 PST 1998 --> <!-- hhmts start --> Last modified: 13 December 1999 <!-- hhmts end --> <br> Describes HDF5 Release 1.5, Unreleased Development Branch </body> </html>