H5Ovisit does not follow soft links

HDF5 Library
1

Hi,

H5Ovisit is documented as follows "Recursively visits all objects accessible from a specified object. ". The documentation does not say anything about soft links and my experiments show that soft links are ignored (I’m using 1.8.16).

Is this behavior intended or is it a bug? What is the best way to recursively visit all accessible objects including access via soft links?

Thanks,
Rafal

2

I think this verbiage in the documentation on H5Ovisit…

H5Lvisit and H5Ovisit are companion functions: one for examining and operating on links; the other for examining and operating on the objects that those links point to.

…means H5Ovisit will not deal with either hard or soft links. You need to use H5Lvisit for links.

3

Hmm…well your topic title uses the phrase “follow soft links” and so I do believe H5Ovisit should follow both hard and soft links and if it is not, that seems like it is inconsistent with the documentation. To operate on the links themselves, as opposed to the objects they point at, you would need to use H5Lvisit, I think :thinking:

4

Hi Rafal,
Perhaps H5Lvisit would work for your purposes?

	Quincey
5

And I should look further up in my email, as Mark has already answered this. :slight_smile:

Quincey
6

If this is the intended behaviour for H5Ovisit, I think it would be good to document it, as it can be somewhat surprising.