The Property List Interface (H5P)

1. Introduction

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.

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 H5Fcreate().

2. General Property List Operations

Property lists follow the same create/open/close paradigm as the rest of the library.

hid_t H5Pcreate (H5P_class_t class)

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:

H5P_FILE_CREATE

Properties for file creation. See H5F for details about the file creation properties.

H5P_FILE_ACCESS

Properties for file access. See H5F for details about the file creation properties.

H5P_DATASET_CREATE

Properties for dataset creation. See H5D for details about dataset creation properties.

H5P_DATASET_XFER

Properties for raw data transfer. See H5D for details about raw data transfer properties.

hid_t H5Pcopy (hid_t plist)

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.

herr_t H5Pclose (hid_t plist)

All property lists should be closed when the application is finished accessing them. This frees resources used by the property list.

H5P_class_t H5Pget_class (hid_t plist)

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 H5Pcreate().

THG Help Desk:
Describes HDF5 Release 1.4.5, February 2003