HDF5 Tutorial:   Introduction

The HDF5 Tutorial was created to help users quickly learn the basics of using HDF5.

HDF5 is a file format and library for storing scientific data. See the What is HDF5? page for information on what it is and why it was created.

HDF5 Tutorial Topics

Compiling the Tutorial Example Programs

C and Fortran 90 example programs are included with the Learning The Basics, High Level , Advanced, and Parallel HDF5 topics, but the HDF5 libraries are not. To use the tutorial examples, you must either obtain the HDF5 source code and build it or use the pre-compiled HDF5 binaries that we provide. The HDF5 software can be obtained from HERE.

Please note that the HDF5 source code is written in C, and also includes wrappers for Fortran 90 and C++.

Compile scripts are included in the bin/ directory of the HDF5 binaries for compiling C (h5cc), C++ (h5c++) and Fortran 90 (h5fc) applications. Information on using the h5cc, h5c++, and h5fc scripts can be found here.

C++ and Java Examples

The HDF5 source code includes C++ wrappers, but the HDF5 Tutorial does not include C++ examples. For examples of using C++, please refer to the C++ examples in the HDF5 source code.

HDF-Java APIs are available for HDF5, but are not included in the HDF5 source code. Please refer to the HDF Java Products page for obtaining the HDF-Java wrappers, and compiling and using HDF-Java.

For examples of using the HDF-Java APIs, see: