summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/doc/html/Properties.html
blob: 6900887abe868113badfc6d422cf4f76079f802d (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
<!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>
   <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="Palettes.html">Palettes</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;
      <br>
      <a href="Ragged.html">Ragged Arrays</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
</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>&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="Palettes.html">Palettes</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;
      <br>
      <a href="Ragged.html">Ragged Arrays</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 1.4 Beta, December 2000


  </body>
</html>