I have had the same problem and worked around it by writing an empty array as a special data type. It's really a nuisance. You could say it was a design error to use 0 to indicate an unlimited dimension. -1 (or maybe MAX_INT) would have been better. An axis length 0 conveys information (especially for vectors).
I doubt if the solution of using an unlimited dimension will work when writing an array as an attribute. AFAIK the same problem exists when having an empty string for a variable length string field. Cheers, Ger >>> "Binh-Minh Ribler" <[email protected]> 3/30/2011 2:04 PM >>> Hi Konrad, Do you think making the dimension unlimited would work for you? Binh-Minh -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Konrad Hinsen Sent: Wednesday, March 30, 2011 6:19 AM To: HDF Users Discussion List Subject: [Hdf-forum] Dimensions of length zero Hi everyone, I found out by experimenting that HDF5 does not seem to like empty arrays, i.e. arrays that have a zero in their dimension list. The associated error message is Zero sized dimension for non-unlimited dimension However, I cannot find anything about this in the documentation (though of course I haven't read all of it). Is this a bug or a feature? I find this restriction quite limiting because there is no obvious way to work around it. If I need to store a list of values and that list just happens to be empty, what can I do? I'd have to define my own representation of an empty list in terms of some non-empty value, perhaps with an attribute saying "this is really empty", but that complicates all application code and the whole file structure. Konrad. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Konrad Hinsen Centre de Biophysique Moléculaire, CNRS Orléans Synchrotron Soleil - Division Expériences Saint Aubin - BP 48 91192 Gif sur Yvette Cedex, France Tel. +33-1 69 35 97 15 E-Mail: research AT khinsen DOT fastmail DOT net --------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion. [email protected] http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org -- Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.549 / Virus Database: 270.9.0/1778 - Release Date: 11/9/2008 2:14 PM _______________________________________________ Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion. [email protected] http://mail.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_hdfgroup.org
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