[ HDF5 Tutorial Top ]

# The HDF5 API

The HDF5 library provides several interfaces, or APIs. These APIs provide routines for creating, accessing, and manipulating HDF5 files and objects.

The library itself is implemented in C. To facilitate the work of FORTRAN90 and Java programmers, HDF5 function wrappers have been developed in each of these languages. At the time of this writing, a set of C++ wrappers is in development. This tutorial discusses the use of the C functions and the FORTRAN wrappers.

All C routines in the HDF5 library begin with a prefix of the form H5*, where * is one or two uppercase letters indicating the type of object on which the function operates. The FORTRAN wrappers come in the form of subroutines that begin with h5 and end with _f. The APIs are listed below:

API | DESCRIPTION
H5 | Library Functions: general-purpose H5 functions
H5A | Annotation Interface: attribute access and manipulation routines
H5D | Dataset Interface: dataset access and manipulation routines
H5E | Error Interface: error handling routines
H5F | File Interface: file access routines
H5G | Group Interface: group creation and operation routines
H5I | Identifier Interface: identifier routines
H5P | Property List Interface: object property list manipulation routines
H5R | Reference Interface: reference routines
H5S | Dataspace Interface: dataspace definition and access routines
H5T | Datatype Interface: datatype creation and manipulation routines
H5Z | Compression Interface: compression routine(s)

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
hdfhelp@ncsa.uiuc.edu

###### Last Modified: June 22, 2001