The HDF5 library provides several interfaces, or APIs. These APIs provide routines for creating, accessing, and manipulating HDF5 files and objects.
The library itself is implemented in C. To facilitate the work of FORTRAN90 and Java programmers, HDF5 function wrappers have been developed in each of these languages. At the time of this writing, a set of C++ wrappers is in development. This tutorial discusses the use of the C functions and the FORTRAN wrappers.
All C routines in the HDF5 library begin with a prefix of the form H5*, where * is one or two uppercase letters indicating the type of object on which the function operates. The FORTRAN wrappers come in the form of subroutines that begin with h5 and end with _f. The APIs are listed below:
|
API
|
DESCRIPTION
|
|
H5
|
Library Functions: general-purpose H5 functions |
|
H5A
|
Annotation Interface: attribute access and manipulation routines |
|
H5D
|
Dataset Interface: dataset access and manipulation routines |
|
H5E
|
Error Interface: error handling routines |
|
H5F
|
File Interface: file access routines |
|
H5G
|
Group Interface: group creation and operation routines |
|
H5I
|
Identifier Interface: identifier routines |
|
H5P
|
Property List Interface: object property list manipulation routines |
|
H5R
|
Reference Interface: reference routines |
|
H5S
|
Dataspace Interface: dataspace definition and access routines |
|
H5T
|
Datatype Interface: datatype creation and manipulation routines |
|
H5Z
|
Compression Interface: compression routine(s) |
