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<div class="section" id="library-reference">
<span id="id1"></span><h1>Library Reference<a class="headerlink" href="#library-reference" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<p>PyTables implements several classes to represent the different nodes in the
object tree. They are named File, Group, Leaf, Table, Array, CArray, EArray,
VLArray and UnImplemented. Another one allows the user to complement the
information on these different objects; its name is AttributeSet. Finally,
another important class called IsDescription allows to build a Table record
description by declaring a subclass of it. Many other classes are defined in
PyTables, but they can be regarded as helpers whose goal is mainly to declare
the <em>data type properties</em> of the different first class objects and will be
described at the end of this chapter as well.</p>
<p>An important function, called open_file is responsible to create, open or append
to files. In addition, a few utility functions are defined to guess if the user
supplied file is a <em>PyTables</em> or <em>HDF5</em> file. These are called is_pytables_file()
and is_hdf5_file(), respectively. There exists also a function called
which_lib_version() that informs about the versions of the underlying C libraries
(for example, HDF5 or Zlib) and another called print_versions() that prints all
the versions of the software that PyTables relies on. Finally, test() lets you
run the complete test suite from a Python console interactively.</p>
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<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/top_level.html">Top-level variables and functions</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/top_level.html#global-variables">Global variables</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/top_level.html#global-functions">Global functions</a></li>
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<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/file_class.html">File manipulation class</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/file_class.html#the-file-class">The File Class</a></li>
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<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/hierarchy_classes.html">Hierarchy definition classes</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/hierarchy_classes.html#the-node-class">The Node class</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/hierarchy_classes.html#the-group-class">The Group class</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/hierarchy_classes.html#the-leaf-class">The Leaf class</a></li>
</ul>
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<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/structured_storage.html">Structured storage classes</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/structured_storage.html#the-table-class">The Table class</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/homogenous_storage.html">Homogenous storage classes</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/homogenous_storage.html#the-array-class">The Array class</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/homogenous_storage.html#the-carray-class">The CArray class</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/homogenous_storage.html#the-earray-class">The EArray class</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/homogenous_storage.html#the-vlarray-class">The VLArray class</a></li>
</ul>
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<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/link_classes.html">Link classes</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/link_classes.html#the-link-class">The Link class</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/link_classes.html#the-softlink-class">The SoftLink class</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/link_classes.html#the-externallink-class">The ExternalLink class</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/declarative_classes.html">Declarative classes</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/declarative_classes.html#the-atom-class-and-its-descendants">The Atom class and its descendants</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/declarative_classes.html#the-col-class-and-its-descendants">The Col class and its descendants</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/declarative_classes.html#the-isdescription-class">The IsDescription class</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/declarative_classes.html#description-helper-functions">Description helper functions</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/declarative_classes.html#the-attributeset-class">The AttributeSet class</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/helper_classes.html">Helper classes</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/helper_classes.html#the-filters-class">The Filters class</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/helper_classes.html#the-index-class">The Index class</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/helper_classes.html#the-indexarray-class">The IndexArray class</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/helper_classes.html#the-enum-class">The Enum class</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/helper_classes.html#the-unimplemented-class">The UnImplemented class</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/helper_classes.html#the-unknown-class">The Unknown class</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/helper_classes.html#exceptions-module">Exceptions module</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/expr_class.html">General purpose expression evaluator class</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/expr_class.html#the-expr-class">The Expr class</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/filenode_classes.html">Filenode Module</a><ul>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/filenode_classes.html#module-constants">Module constants</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/filenode_classes.html#module-functions">Module functions</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/filenode_classes.html#the-rawpytablesio-base-class">The RawPyTablesIO base class</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/filenode_classes.html#the-rofilenode-class">The ROFileNode class</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l2"><a class="reference internal" href="libref/filenode_classes.html#the-rafilenode-class">The RAFileNode class</a></li>
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