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<!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>&nbsp;<br>
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   And in this document, the 
   <a href="H5.user.html"><strong>HDF5 User's Guide:</strong></a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
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      <a href="Groups.html">Groups</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <br>
      <a href="References.html">References</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <a href="Attributes.html">Attributes</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
      Property Lists&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <a href="Errors.html">Error Handling</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <br>
      <a href="Filters.html">Filters</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <a href="Caching.html">Caching</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
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</td></tr>
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</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>&nbsp;<br>
   <a href="RM_H5Front.html">HDF5 Reference Manual</a>&nbsp;<br>
   <a href="index.html">Other HDF5 documents and links</a>&nbsp;<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>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <br>
      <a href="Files.html">Files</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <a href="Datasets.html">Datasets</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <a href="Datatypes.html">Datatypes</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <a href="Dataspaces.html">Dataspaces</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <a href="Groups.html">Groups</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <br>
      <a href="References.html">References</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <a href="Attributes.html">Attributes</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
      Property Lists&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <a href="Errors.html">Error Handling</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <br>
      <a href="Filters.html">Filters</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <a href="Caching.html">Caching</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <a href="Chunking.html">Chunking</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <a href="MountingFiles.html">Mounting Files</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <br>
      <a href="Performance.html">Performance</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <a href="Debugging.html">Debugging</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <a href="Environment.html">Environment</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <a href="ddl.html">DDL</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
</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


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