Last modified: 10 November 2010
Tool Name: h5check
Syntax:
h5check [OPTIONS] file

Purpose:
Verifies that an HDF5 file is encoded according to the HDF5 specification.

Motivation:
h5check is a validation tool designed to verify that an HDF5 file is encoded according to the HDF5 File Format Specification. The purpose is to ensure data model integrity and long-term compatibility between evolving versions of the HDF5 Library.

Independent Verification Tool: Note that h5check is designed to operate independently of the HDF5 Library:

Description:
Given a file, h5check scans through the encoded content, verifying it against the defined library format. If it finds any non-compliance, h5check prints the error and the reason behind the non-compliance; if possible, it continues the scanning. If h5check does not find any non-compliance, it prints an approval statement upon completion.

By default, the file is verified against the latest version of the file format; as of this writing, that is the format recognized by the HDF5 Release 1.8.x series. A format version can be explicitly specified with the -fn (or --format=n) option. For example, -f16 (or --format=16) would specify verification against the format recognized by the HDF5 Release 1.6.x series.

Options:
-h, --help
Print usage message and exit.
-V, --version
Print version number and exit.
-vn, --verbose n
Set verbose mode:
n=0 Terse Indicate only whether file is compliant.
n=1 Normal Print progress and all errors found.   (Default)
n=2 Verbose Print all known information; usually used for debugging.
-e, --external
Validate external links existing in the file.
-fn, --format n
Set library release version against which the file is to be validated:
n=16 Validate according to HDF5 Release 1.6.x series.
n=18 Validate according to HDF5 Release 1.8.x series.   (Default)
-oa, --object a
Check object header, where a is the address of the object header to be validated.

Exit Status:
0 Succeeded.
1 Command failures, such as argument errors.
2 Format compliance errors found.

History:
Release     Change
1.8.5 Tool first distributed shortly before this release.