Difference in API description and actual implementation

HDFView / Java HDF Object Package
1

I recently updated to the HDFObject package from HDFView 3.3.2. I found the following API description on the hdf website: H5Attribute (HDFView 3.1.3) (hdfgroup.org). At least it says 3.3.2 in the actual link.

Therein, H5Attribute is a class which implements the Attribute interface. Ok, changes to my code were made accordingly. I was then surprised to get an error message in my implementation that says that H5Attribute is an interface and can therefore not be instantiated. I was confused and had a look at the hdfobject.jar that is shipped with HDFView 3.3.2 (from HDFView\3.3.2\app\).

To my surprise I found that therein, H5Attribute actually is an interface with implementations in H5CompoundAttr and H5ScalarAttr:

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How can that be? It is the same version. What am I missing here? Is that a mixup in the documentation and the link is for 3.1.3 as it somehow gets for the link description by pasting it here?

2

Yes the documentation is incorrect - I am looking at a recent build and the documentation correctly indicates it is an interface.

Looks like we missed something in getting the correct javadocs files. I will investigate and post update javadocs to our “support.hdfgroup.org/releases/hdfview/v3_3/v3_3_2/documentation/index.html” location.

However, please refer to the source in our github repository for accurate documentation until I can fix it.

3

Thanks for the clarification