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| HDF5 Last Updated on 2026-07-28 The HDF5 Field Guide

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The HDF5 h5ls Tool

Navigate back: Main / HDF5 User Guide / Command Line Tools for HDF5 Files

# h5ls

## Introduction

With h5ls, you can dump objects from an HDF5 file.

## Usage

#### h5ls [OPTIONS] file[/OBJECT] [file[/[OBJECT]...]

## file/OBJECT

Each object consists of an HDF5 file name optionally followed by a slash and an object name within the file (if no object is specified within the file then the contents of the root group are displayed). The file name may include a printf(3C) integer format such as "%05d" to open a file family.

## Error Report Option

- --enable-error-stack Prints messages from the HDF5 error stack as they occur. Optional value 2 also prints file open errors, `--enable-error-stack=2`.

## Options

- --help Print a usage message and exit
- --address Print raw data address. If dataset is contiguous, address is offset in file of beginning of raw data. If chunked, returned list of addresses indicates offset of each chunk. Must be used with --verbose option. Provides no information for non-dataset objects.
- --data Print the values of datasets
- --follow-symlinks Follow symbolic links (soft links and external links) to display target object information.
  Without this option, h5ls identifies a symbolic link as a soft link or external link and prints the value assigned to the symbolic link; it does not provide any information regarding the target object or determine whether the link is a dangling link.
- --no-dangling-links Must be used with --follow-symlinks option; otherwise, h5ls shows error message and returns an exit code of 1.
  Check for any symbolic links (soft links or external links) that do not resolve to an existing object (dataset, group, or named datatype).
  If any dangling link is found, this situation is treated as an error and h5ls returns an exit code of 1.
- --full Print full path names instead of base names
- --group Show information about a group, not its contents
- --label Label members of compound datasets
- --recursive List all groups recursively, avoiding cycles
- --string Print 1-byte integer datasets as ASCII
- --simple Use a machine-readable output format
- --width=N Set the number of columns of output
- --verbose Generate more verbose output
- --version Print the library version number and exit
- --page-buffer-size=N Set the page buffer cache size, N=non-negative integers
- --vfd=DRIVER Use the specified virtual file driver
- --hexdump Show raw data in hexadecimal format
- --endpoint-url=P Supply S3 endpoint url information to "ros3" vfd. P is the AWS service endpoint. Has no effect if vfd flag not set to "ros3".
- --s3-cred=C Supply S3 authentication information to "ros3" vfd. Accepts tuple of
  (<aws-region>,<access-id>,<access-key>)
  or
  (<aws-region>,<access-id>,<access-key>,<session-token>)
  . If absent or C =
  (,,)
  or C =
  (,,,)
  defaults to no-authentication. Has no effect if vfd flag not set to "ros3".
- --hdfs-attrs=A Supply configuration information to Hadoop VFD. Accepts tuple of
  (<namenode name>,<namenode port>,
  ...<kerberos cache path>,<username>,<buffer size>)
  If absent or A ==
  (,,,,)
  all default values are used. Has no effect if vfd flag is not 'hdfs'.
- --vol-value Value (ID) of the VOL connector to use for opening the HDF5 file specified
- --vol-name Name of the VOL connector to use for opening the HDF5 file specified
- --vol-info VOL-specific info to pass to the VOL connector used for opening the HDF5 file specified If none of the above options are used to specify a VOL, then the VOL named by HDF5_VOL_CONNECTOR (or the native VOL connector, if that environment variable is unset) will be used
- --vfd-value Value (ID) of the VFL driver to use for opening the HDF5 file specified
- --vfd-name Name of the VFL driver to use for opening the HDF5 file specified
- --vfd-info VFD-specific info to pass to the VFL driver used for opening the HDF5 file specified

### Deprecated Options

The following options have been removed in HDF5 1.12. Use the indicated replacement option in all work.

- --external Follow external links.
  Replaced by --follow-symlinks.
- --errors Show all HDF5 error reporting
  Replaced by --enable-error-stack.

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