H5: General Library Functions

These functions serve general-purpose needs of the HDF5 library and it users.

Name: H5open
Signature:: herr_t H5open(void)
Purpose:: Initializes the HDF5 library.
Description:: H5open initialize the library. This function is normally called automatically, but if you find that an HDF5 library function is failing inexplicably, try calling this function first.
Parameters:

None.
Returns:: Returns a non-negative value if successful; otherwise returns a negative value.

Name: H5close
Signature:: herr_t H5close(void)
Purpose:: Flushes all data to disk, closes file identifiers, and cleans up memory.
Description:: H5close flushes all data to disk, closes all file identifiers, and cleans up all memory used by the library. This function is generall called when the application calls exit, but may be called earlier in event of an emergency shutdown or out of desire to free all resources used by the HDF5 library.
Parameters:

None.
Returns:: Returns a non-negative value if successful; otherwise returns a negative value.

Name: H5dont_atexit
Signature:: herr_t H5dont_atexit(void)
Purpose:: Instructs library not to install atexit cleanup routine.
Description:: H5dont_atexit indicates to the library that an atexit() cleanup routine should not be installed. The major purpose for this is in situations where the library is dynamically linked into an application and is un-linked from the application before exit() gets called. In those situations, a routine installed with atexit() would jump to a routine which was no longer in memory, causing errors.
In order to be effective, this routine must be called before any other HDF function calls, and must be called each time the library is loaded/linked into the application (the first time and after it's been un-loaded).
Parameters:

None.
Returns:: Returns a non-negative value if successful; otherwise returns a negative value.

Name: H5get_libversion
Signature:: herr_t H5get_libversion(unsigned *majnum, unsigned *minnum, unsigned *relnum )
Purpose:: Returns the HDF library release number.
Description:: H5get_libversion retrieves the major, minor, and release numbers of the version of the HDF library which is linked to the application.
Parameters:

unsigned *majnum
The major version of the library.
unsigned *minnum
The minor version of the library.
unsigned *relnum
The release number of the library.
Returns:: Returns a non-negative value if successful; otherwise returns a negative value.

Name: H5check_version
Signature:: herr_t H5check_version(unsigned majnum, unsigned minnum, unsigned relnum )
Purpose:
Description:: H5check_version verifies that the arguments match the version numbers compiled into the library. This function is intended to be called from user to verify that the versions of header files compiled into the application match the version of the HDF5 library.
Due to the risks of data corruption or segmentation faults, H5check_version causes the application to abort if the version numbers do not match.
Parameters:

unsigned *majnum
The major version of the library.
unsigned *minnum
The minor version of the library.
unsigned *relnum
The release number of the library.
unsigned *patnum
The patch number of the library.
Returns:: Returns a non-negative value if successful. Upon failure, this function causes the application to abort.

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Last modified: 30 October 1998