Hi Jarom,

We did originally plan to add support for complex types in HDF5-1.10.  However, 
after the issue was examined closely, we decided to wait until we had a 
well-defined scope of
what it means to add support for complex types within the library.
The issue is still open but not assigned to be fixed in a specific release.

-Barbara

From: Hdf-forum [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of 
Nelson, Jarom
Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2017 10:32 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Hdf-forum] Complex numbers (1.10.x update?)

At what point (if any?) will HDF5 support a complex floating point datatype 
(i.e. pair of real and imaginary floating point numbers) "out-of-the-box"?

This is probably something that comes up frequently, but I haven't found the 
current status of the question.

Searching the archives and the documentation, it seems that a complex floating 
point data type was at one point planned for the 1.10 release, however, I don't 
see anything about continuation of that plan in the documentation.

Ref: these two threads from 2010
https://lists.hdfgroup.org/pipermail/hdf-forum_lists.hdfgroup.org/2010-December/004011.html
https://lists.hdfgroup.org/pipermail/hdf-forum_lists.hdfgroup.org/2010-April/003049.html

Perhaps the answer can be implied from this point in that thread:
To be fair, because there's no one-size-fits-all complex number
solution outside Fortran, a one-size-fits-all cross-language HDF5
helper method to define a complex type would be difficult to get
right.  Not technically difficult, just socially difficult.

- Rhys

Also, this seems like a likely topic for a FAQ. (There's one there for boolean 
datatype)

Jarom Nelson, LLNL

_______________________________________________
Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion.
[email protected]
http://lists.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_lists.hdfgroup.org
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hdf5

Reply via email to