HDF5 Reference Manual H5 H5A H5D H5E H5F H5G H5P H5S H5T H5Z Glossary

HDF5 Glossary

(Under construction: This is the bare beginning of a Glossary to accompany the HDF5 documentation; it is by no means complete.)

atomic datatype
attribute
basic datatypes
boot block
chunked layout
chunking
complex datatype
compound datatype
compound element
contiguous layout
dataset
dataspace dimensions selection

datatype atomic datatype basic datatypes complex datatype compound datatype disk I/O data types named datatype opaque datatype
dimensions
disk I/O data types
element
file boot block compound element element group path root group
group element member root group

hard link
identifier
layout chunked layout chunking contiguous layout storage layout
links hard link soft link softlink name
member
named datatype
opaque datatype
path
root group
selection
soft link
softlink name
storage layout
target

(Aside from the datatype information below, this list is drawn from the HDF5 DDL. Not yet included: terms such as integer, string, float... dataspace name, scalar space data... ...)

basic data types:

(Some data types may change substantially en route to Release 1.0.)
char - 8-bit character (only for ASCII information)
int8 - 8-bit signed integer
uint8 - 8-bit unsigned integer
int16 - 16-bit signed integer
uint16 - 16-bit unsigned integer
int32 - 32-bit signed integer
uint32 - 32-bit unsigned integer
intn - "native" signed integer
uintn - "native" unsigned integer
int64 - 64-bit signed integer (new)
uint64 - 64-bit unsigned integer (new)
float32 - 32-bit IEEE float
float64 - 64-bit IEEE float

Complex data types:

(Some data types may change substantially en route to Release 1.0.)
hid_t - 32-bit unsigned integer used as ID for memory objects
hoid_t - 32-bit unsigned integer (currently) used as ID for disk-based objects
hbool_t - boolean to indicate true/false/error codes from functions
herr_t - 32-bit integer to indicate succeed/fail codes from functions

disk I/O data types:

(Some data types may change substantially en route to Release 1.0.)
hoff_t - (64-bit?) offset on disk in bytes
hlen_t - (64-bit?) length on disk in bytes

HDF5 Reference Manual H5 H5A H5D H5E H5F H5G H5P H5S H5T H5Z Glossary

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Last modified: 14 July 1998