[h5md-user] HDF5 creation time tracking

[Peter Colberg]

Hi all,

I did a short test of HDF5 object tracking times (using LuaJIT).

For groups, none of the times are set in the metadata:

  local gcpl = hdf5.create_plist("group_create")
  gcpl:set_obj_track_times(true)
  local group = file:create_group("observables/species", nil, gcpl)

  local info = group:get_info()
  print("atime", info.atime)          -- atime   0LL
  print("ctime", info.ctime)          -- ctime   0LL
  print("mtime", info.mtime)          -- mtime   0LL
  print("btime", info.btime)          -- btime   0LL

For datasets, the creation time is set in the metadata:

  local filespace = hdf5.create_simple_space({0}, {nil})
  local dcpl = hdf5.create_plist("dataset_create")
  dcpl:set_chunk({1000})
  dcpl:set_deflate(6)
  dcpl:set_obj_track_times(true)
  local dset = group:create_dataset("value", "native_float", filespace, nil, 
dcpl)

  local info = dset:get_info()
  print("atime", info.atime)        -- atime   0LL
  print("ctime", info.ctime)        -- ctime   1369864624LL
  print("mtime", info.mtime)        -- mtime   0LL
  print("btime", info.btime)        -- btime   0LL

So it works for dataset objects, but not for group objects.

That would be worthwhile to report to the HDF5 developers.

Peter