A dataset with exactly one unlimited dimension — the ordinary
append-only case — is indexed by an Extensible Array. Only its first
few chunk entries (4 by default) sit inline in the index block, and
everything past them was read with the wrong layout. In the default
shape the 37th chunk onward came back from the wrong place: a
400-chunk dataset returned 364 wrong values while reporting success,
and beyond about a thousand chunks the read failed outright. Silently
wrong data is the worse half of that.
It survived because the only Extensible Array fixture in the suite had
three chunks — inside the inline limit — so no test ever reached a data
block.
Four layout errors, each confirmed against files written by HDF5 2.0 and
against the library source rather than inferred:
- super block `u` owns 2^(u/2) data blocks, not 2^u;
- each holds 2^((u+1)/2) * data_blk_min_elmts elements — the two
quantities double every *other* level, a half step apart;
- a super block carries a block-offset field before its data block
addresses, which was not skipped;
- the page-init bitmap belongs to the super block, one bit per page
packed across all of its data blocks and read MSB-first, rather than
living inside the data block; a paged data block also ends its prefix
with a checksum before the first page.
Where the spec left room for doubt the file settled it: decoding a
paged block's elements and reading the chunk values they address
identifies the mapping exactly, and the bitmap's 68 set bits matched
the 34 data blocks x 2 pages that 200 000 elements need, which only
holds MSB-first.
New interop tests cross every boundary — 4, 37, 400, 5 000 and 200 000
chunks, the last with paged data blocks — plus sparse (uninitialised
pages taking fill values), gzip-filtered elements and a 2-D dataset.
All three fail against the old traversal.
Writing is untouched; this was a read-path bug.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
