Hmmm. Do you care about whether the HDF5 dataset's type in the file shows as "uint32_t" for example? Or, do you simply care that you are not wasting space storing an array of 16 bit values using a 32 bit type?
If you DO NOT CARE about the HDF5's dataset type, my first thought would be to handle this as a filter instead of a type_cb callback. Have you considered that? * https://support.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/RM/RM_H5Z.html * https://support.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/RM/RM_H5P.html#Property-SetFilter * https://support.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/Advanced/DynamicallyLoadedFilters/ The filter could handle *both* the type size change and the special value mapping much like any "compression" filter would. Now, consumers of the dataset data in memory would still only ever think that the type in memory was a 32 bit type, but the data stored on disk would be 16 bits. Now, if you really do want the dataset's type to be some 16 bit type so that things like h5ls, h5dump, H5Dget_type all return a known, 16 bit type, then yeah, probably a custom type conversion is the way to go? But, note that it will still appear to be a *custom* type to HDF5 and not a built-in 16 bit type. Also, I don't think type conversion can be handled as a 'plugin' in the same way filters are so that anyone reading that data, would also need to have linked with (e.g. HDF5 will not -- at least I don't think it will -- load custom type conversion code from some plugin) your implementation of that type conversion callback. Hope that helps. Mark "Hdf-forum on behalf of Kevin B. McCarty" wrote: Hi list, I am doing some work that should convert integer datasets automatically from a larger integer type in memory, to a smaller integer type on disk, when appropriate. To give a concrete example: I might have code that converts a uint32_t dataset in memory to a uint16_t dataset on disk if it turns out that the values in the in-memory dataset all can be expressed losslessly in 16 bits. The problem is that I wish to allow for the possibility of one specific value that does *not* fit in 16 bits, which however I'd like to translate to a suitable 16-bit replacement value on disk. That is: if (memValue == (uint32_t)(-1)) diskValue = (uint16_t)(-1); /* Quietly replace all instances of 4294967295 in RAM with 65535 on-disk */ It seems clear that in order to effect this automatic replacement, I need to write a callback to be given to H5Pset_type_conv_cb() that will catch overflows and make them instead quietly translate the out-of-range value to the desired replacement value. What I don't understand is what code should go in the body of the callback function to do this. (Feel free to assume that the only out-of-range value that might occur will be the specific value I wish to translate.) I've not been able to find any examples showing how to write such a callback function online. Advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance, -- Kevin B. McCarty <kmcca...@gmail.com<mailto:kmcca...@gmail.com>> _______________________________________________ Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion. Hdf-forum@lists.hdfgroup.org<mailto:Hdf-forum@lists.hdfgroup.org> http://lists.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_lists.hdfgroup.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/hdf5
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