libhdf5 fails to read a VL element whose global heap address is
undefined (all 0xff), even at length 0 ("addr undefined"); we returned
"" (or an empty sequence) in every reader. Checked with h5py first:
libhdf5 writes a null element with address 0, which still reads as
empty, and h5py writes "" as a zero-size heap object at a real address,
so no file they write relies on the old behaviour. read_vl_bytes now
treats address 0 as null whatever the length, as VlResolver does.
Tests, each failing before: vl_data unit test (8- and 4-byte offsets,
lengths 0 and 1); clawhdf5 vl_data_interop
a_vl_element_at_the_undefined_heap_address_fails_like_h5py (also checks
where h5py writes ""); h5rs dump --json and check --data on the patched
`undef` dataset; clawhdf5-wasm vl_strings.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
clawhdf5
Pure-Rust HDF5 reader/writer — no C dependencies.
Features
- Read and write HDF5 files entirely in Rust
- Memory-mapped I/O for large files (
mmapfeature, enabled by default) - Parallel chunk reads via Rayon (
parallelfeature) - Lazy dataset access for minimal memory usage
- h5py-compatible file output
Usage
use clawhdf5::File;
let file = File::open("data.h5").unwrap();
let dataset = file.dataset("/group/data").unwrap();
let values: Vec<f64> = dataset.read_1d().unwrap();
License
MIT