Files
clawhdf5/crates/clawhdf5-format/README.md
T
osobhandClaude Opus 5.5 c27a478e44 docs: fact-check the refreshed documentation against its sources
Numbers, API names, feature defaults and PR references checked against
CONFORMANCE.md, BENCHMARKS.md, CHANGELOG.md, the code and git history.

- int8 index figures (1.74x memory, 1.63x QPS) carry the dates git gives
  them (2026-09-19/20, machine not recorded, not re-run) instead of none;
  the Pi 5 1.18x carries 2026-09-21.
- BENCHMARKS headline: the libhdf5 chunked-write figure is the newest
  measurement (35x, 2026-09-23), not 45.3x (2026-08-03).
- Conformance counts follow the 2026-09-28 run (1 our-error, 2 ref-bug)
  in conformance/README.md, ROADMAP.md and CLAUDE.md, with a pointer to
  the bad_nbit_parms_walk.h5 flip.
- README: LZ4 is opt-in; the browser refuses reference/opaque/bitfield/
  time datasets too; zlib-rs byte-identity scoped to what was measured;
  macOS default links the system libz for inflate.
- Crate READMEs: system-zlib-decompress does something (macOS), SweepDetector
  lives in prefetch, checkpoint after more than 500 WAL entries, NetCDF-4
  unlimited-dimension size warning.
- agent-memory.md: string-dataset compression threshold, agents-md prints
  Markdown, float16 file sizes linked to their study.
- known-issues.md: contiguous selection reads, 1.21x vs h5py threads.
- docs/README.md, USE_CASES.md, ROADMAP.md, CLAUDE.md: range-read
  milestones M0-M5 and PRs #17-#19, missing README rows, CLI keygen/verify,
  dated figures, fast-math is not BLAS.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
2026-09-28 11:23:51 -05:00

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# clawhdf5-format
The HDF5 file format in pure Rust: parsers and writers for every on-disk
structure, the filter pipeline and its codecs, and the shared type
definitions the other crates use. Most users want the
[`clawhdf5`](../clawhdf5/README.md) facade, which wraps this crate in an
h5py-like API; use this one directly for low-level access or in `no_std`
code.
Not on crates.io yet; depend on it from git:
```toml
[dependencies]
clawhdf5-format = { git = "https://git.redclaw.dev/quantumclaw/clawhdf5" }
```
## What is in it
- **Parsing:** superblock v0–v3 (`superblock`, with the superblock
extension and metadata cache images, `superblock_ext`), object headers v1
and v2 (`object_header`), every header message the readers use
(`datatype`, `dataspace`, `data_layout` v1–v4 including virtual datasets,
`fill_value`, `attribute`, `link_message`, `shared_message`, ...), groups
old and new (`group_v1` symbol tables with local heaps, `group_v2` with
fractal heaps and v2 B-trees), and every chunk index (v1 B-tree, single
chunk, implicit, fixed array, extensible array, v2 B-tree).
- **Reading data:** `data_read` (contiguous, compact, chunked),
`partial_read` and `selection` (hyperslabs and points), `vl_data`
(variable-length strings and sequences through the global heap),
`chunk_cache`.
- **Storage:** the `storage::Storage` trait (`read_at`, `read_ranges`,
`len`, `hint`) that every read path goes through, so a file can be read
from memory, a file handle or a remote backend
([`clawhdf5-remote`](../clawhdf5-remote/README.md)).
- **Writing:** `file_writer::FileWriter` and the builders in
`type_builders` (datasets, groups, attributes, compound and enum types,
links, virtual datasets, creation-order tracking); chunk indexes and
dense-storage B-trees of any size (`chunked_write`, `btree_v2_write`,
`ea_writer`). Output is read by h5py and h5dump.
- **Filters:** `filter_pipeline` and `filter_registry` (look up by ID; other
IDs can be registered at run time with `register_filter`). Built in:
deflate, shuffle, Fletcher-32, N-Bit, scale-offset; behind features LZ4,
Zstd, SZIP (decode), pcodec, and the plugin filters LZF, bitshuffle,
bzip2, Blosc 1 (read and write), Blosc2 and ZFP (read only).
- **Shared pieces:** `float16` (the one IEEE half-precision conversion the
workspace uses), `provenance` (SHA-256 dataset hashes), `checksum`
(Jenkins lookup3 for v2+ structures).
## Example
```rust
use clawhdf5_format::file_writer::{AttrValue, FileWriter};
use clawhdf5_format::{group_v2, object_header, signature, superblock};
// Write a file to memory
let mut fw = FileWriter::new();
fw.create_dataset("data")
.with_f64_data(&[1.0, 2.0, 3.0])
.with_shape(&[3])
.set_attr("unit", AttrValue::String("m/s".into()));
let bytes = fw.finish().unwrap();
// Parse it back: superblock -> path -> object header
let (_user_block, file) = signature::split_user_block(&bytes).unwrap();
let sb = superblock::Superblock::parse(file, 0).unwrap();
let addr = group_v2::resolve_path_any(file, &sb, "data").unwrap();
let hdr = object_header::ObjectHeader::parse(file, addr as usize, sb.offset_size, sb.length_size)
.unwrap();
assert!(!hdr.messages.is_empty());
```
## Features
| Feature | Default | What | Builds C |
|---|---|---|---|
| `std` | yes | standard library; without it the crate is `no_std` + `alloc` (CI builds it for `thumbv7em-none-eabihf`) | no |
| `checksum` | yes | verify Jenkins lookup3 checksums | no |
| `deflate` | yes | deflate through flate2 | no |
| `zlib-rs` | yes | flate2's pure-Rust zlib-rs backend, with `runtime_detection` (without it zlib-rs loses SIMD and inflates 3.5x slower) | no |
| `system-zlib-decompress` | yes | macOS only: inflate with the system libz first, falling back to flate2; no effect elsewhere | no (links the system libz on macOS) |
| `provenance` | yes | SHA-256 provenance hashes | no |
| `lzf` | yes | LZF (32000) | no |
| `parallel` | no | rayon-parallel chunk decoding | no |
| `fast-checksum` | no | hardware CRC32 through `crc32fast` | no |
| `lz4` | no | LZ4 (32004) | no |
| `pcodec` | no | pcodec | no |
| `bitshuffle`, `bzip2`, `blosc` | no | 32008, 307, 32001, read and write | no |
| `blosc2`, `zfp` | no | 32026, 32013, read only | no |
| `plugin-filters` | no | all six plugin filters above | no |
| `lookup-stats` | no | counters for name-lookup benchmarks | no |
| `zstd` | no | Zstandard (32015) | yes (libzstd) |
| `szip` | no | SZIP (4) decoding | links the system libaec (`libaec-dev`) |
| `fast-deflate` | no | zlib-ng | yes (cmake) |
| `system-zlib` | no | the system zlib | yes (`libz-sys`) |
| `blake3_hash` | no | `provenance::blake3_hash` | yes (`cc`) |
## Robustness
Every parser is meant to return an error, never panic, on hostile input:
nine cargo-fuzz targets live in [`fuzz/`](fuzz/README.md), the conformance
sweep includes the HDF Group's CVE corpus
([`CONFORMANCE.md`](../../CONFORMANCE.md)), and header checks follow
libhdf5's. Open gaps are in [`docs/known-issues.md`](../../docs/known-issues.md).
## License
MIT