HDF5 Tools

HDF5 Tool Interfaces

These tools enable the user to examine HDF5 files interactively.

h5dump -- A tool for displaying HDF5 file contents h5ls -- A tool for listing specified features of HDF5 file contents h5repart -- A tool for repartitioning a file, creating a family of files

Tool Name: h5dump

Syntax:

h5dump [-h] [-bb] [-header] [-a names] [-d names] [-g names] [-l names] file

Purpose:

Displays HDF5 file contents.

Description:

h5dump enables the user to interactively examine the contents of an HDF5 file and dump those contents, in human readable form, to an ASCII file or to other tools.

h5dump displays HDF5 file content on standard output. It may display the content of the whole HDF5 file or selected objects, which can be groups, datasets, links, or attributes.

The -header option displays object header information only and must appear before the -a, -d, -g, or -l options.

Native data types created in one machine are displayed with native names when h5dump runs in the same machine type. But when h5dump runs in a different machine type, it displays the native data types with standard type names. This will be changed in the next release to always display with standard type names.

The h5dump output is described in detail in DDL, the Data Description Language document.

Options and Parameters:

-h

Print information on this command.

-bb

Displays the content of boot block. The default is not to display.

-header

Displays header information only; no data is displayed.

-a names

Displays the specified attribute(s).

-d names

Displays the specified dataset(s).

-g names

Displays all the objects within the specified group(s).

-l names

Displays the specified link value(s).

file

The file to be examined.

Current Status:

The current version of h5dump can display the following types of information:

• Group name
• Attribute name, data type, data space, and data
• Dataset name, data type, data space, and data
• Soft link name, link value

Limitions in the current implementaion include the following:

• Only one file is displayed at a time (file families are not supported).
• The whole file content is displayed (none of above options are supported).
• Compound data types are not yet supported.
• Complex data spaces are not yet supported.

See Also:

HDF5 Data Description Language syntax (DDL)

Tool Name: h5ls

Syntax:

h5ls [options] file [objects...]

Purpose:

Prints information about a file or dataset.

Description:

h5ls prints selected information about file objects in the specified format.

Options and Parameters:

-h   or   -?   or   --help

Print a usage message and exit.

-d   or   --dump

Print the values of datasets.

-wN   or   --width=N

Set the number of columns of output.

-v   or   --verbose

Generate more verbose output.

-V   or   --version

Print version number and exit.

file

The file name may include a printf(3C) integer format such as %%05d to open a file family.

objects

The names of zero or more objects about which information should be displayed. If a group is mentioned then information about each of its members is displayed. If no object names are specified then information about all of the objects in the root group is displayed.

Tool Name: h5repart

Syntax:

h5repart [-v] [-V] [-[b|m]N[g|m|k]] source_file dest_file

Purpose:

Repartitions a file or family of files.

Description:

h5repart splits a single file into a family of files, joins a family of files into a single file, or copies one family of files to another while changing the size of the family members. h5repart can also be used to copy a single file to a single file with holes.

Sizes associated with the -b and -m options may be suffixed with g for gigabytes, m for megabytes, or k for kilobytes.

File family names include an integer printf format such as %d.

Options and Parameters:

-v

Produce verbose output.

-V

Print a version number and exit.

-bN

The I/O block size, defaults to 1kB

-mN

The destination member size or 1GB

source_file

The name of the source file

dest_file

The name of the destination files