The following table organizes tools by category to help users focus on the tools they need.
| Category | Tools | Comments | Usage |
|---|---|---|---|
| View or Display | HDFView | Interactive Java tool. Can view HDF5 file tree structure, images, spreadsheets, properties, attributes. | See tutorial topic Learning HDF5 with HDFView. |
| h5dump | Command-line utility to display or dump contents of HDF5 file in text. | h5dump xxx.h5 h5dump -n xxx.h5 | |
| h5ls | Command-line utility to display or list contents of HDF5 file in text. | h5ls xxx.h5 | |
| h5diff | Command-line utility to compare HDF5 files. | h5diff file1.h5 file2.h5 | |
| Other tools | There are various HDF5 command-line tools to view files in different ways (h5stat, h5perf_serial, ...) | ||
| Modify | HDFView | Interactive Java tool: can create, delete, copy and edit datasets, groups, attributes | See tutorial topic Learning HDF5 with HDFView. |
| h5repack | Command-line tool to repack a file. Can be used to get rid of unused space, change properties of datasets and more. | ||
| h5edit | Command-line tool to create and delete attributes in groups and datasets (not complete, more features to be added later). | ||
| Other tools | There are various HDF5 command-line tools to edit files in different ways (h5copy, h5jam, ...) | ||
| Export | HDFView | Interactive Java tool. Text and Binary data can be exported to a file. HDF4 and HDF5 images and palettes can be exported to JPEG, PNG, GIF, or BMP files. | |
| h5dump | Text and binary data can be exported to a file. | h5dump -o dset.asci -y -w 400 dset.h5 h5dump -b -o file.bin h5dump --xml --use-dtd --xml-dtd=U --xml-ns=S | |
| Convert | HDFView | Can convert GIF, JPEG, BMP, and PNG images into HDF5, and vice-versa | See Section 6.6 in UG. |
| h5toh4 | Command-line utility to convert some HDF5 files to HDF4. See h4h5tools. | h5toh4 input.h5 output.h4 | |
| HDF5 to NetCDF | Several tools to get HDF5 to NetCDF | ||
| HDF5 To Excel | You can use h5dump or HDFView to get output that is readable by Excel. | ||
| Import | HDFView | Interactive Java tool. Can import a palette from a file into an image. Can inport text and binary data into a spreadsheet. | See Section 6.5 in UG. |
| h5import | Command-line tool to import data into an existing or new HDF5 file. |