Hi Mark,
On Mar 11, 2010, at 12:52 PM, Mark Miller wrote:
> There may have been a thread about this before but is it conceivable to
> smarten HDF5's open call and/or add a H5Pset_fapl_autovfd property that
> will attempt to automatically detect which vfd to use to correctly open
> a file by first opening the file and reading the superblock and, with
> appropriate info encoded into the superblock, determine the correct vfd
> to use to actually open and read the file?
This is a very good idea and something we've intended on pursuing, but
haven't gotten around to yet.
> It looks like some vfd's define additional superblock/userblock contents
> while others do not.
>
> I suppose another option is to after reading the superblock, pass its
> contents to all an 'identify' function in all know vfd's asking each one
> to indicate if it thinks it can open the file. If the resulting list of
> positive answers is of size 0, can't open; size 1, use that vfd, size>1,
> try in some kind of priority order.
Yes, this sounds reasonable. Perhaps we can work it into the "VFD
contract" document that I'll be starting in a couple of weeks.
Quincey
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