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<title>Property List Interface (H5P)</title>
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And in this document, the
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<h1>The 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>
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<a href="H5.intro.html">Introduction to HDF5</a> <br>
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And in this document, the
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<br>
<a href="Files.html">Files</a>
<a href="Datasets.html">Datasets</a>
<a href="Datatypes.html">Datatypes</a>
<a href="Dataspaces.html">Dataspaces</a>
<a href="Groups.html">Groups</a>
<br>
<a href="References.html">References</a>
<a href="Attributes.html">Attributes</a>
Property Lists
<a href="Errors.html">Error Handling</a>
<br>
<a href="Filters.html">Filters</a>
<a href="Caching.html">Caching</a>
<a href="Chunking.html">Chunking</a>
<a href="MountingFiles.html">Mounting Files</a>
<br>
<a href="Performance.html">Performance</a>
<a href="Debugging.html">Debugging</a>
<a href="Environment.html">Environment</a>
<a href="ddl.html">DDL</a>
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<a href="mailto:hdfhelp@ncsa.uiuc.edu">HDF Help Desk</a>
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<!-- Created: Tue Feb 10 17:06:58 PST 1998 -->
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Last modified: 13 December 1999
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Describes HDF5 Release 1.4.4, July 2002
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