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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN">
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Property List Interface (H5P)</title>
  </head>

  <body>
    <h1>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>
    <address><a href="mailto:matzke@llnl.gov">Robb Matzke</a></address>
    <address><a href="mailto:koziol@ncsa.uiuc.edu">Quincey Koziol</a></address>
<!-- Created: Tue Feb 10 17:06:58 PST 1998 -->
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Last modified: Tue Feb 10 17:26:41 PST 1998
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  </body>
</html>