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

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The HDF5 h5watch Tool

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

# h5watch

## Introduction

With h5watch, you can dump stats from an HDF5 file.

## Usage

#### h5watch [OPTIONS] [OBJECT]

## 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
- --version Print the library version number and exit
- --label Label members of compound typed dataset.
- --simple Use a machine-readable output format.
- --dim Monitor changes in size of dataset dimensions only.
- --width=N Set the number of columns to N for output.
  A value of 0 sets the number of columns to the maximum (65535). The default width is 80 columns.
- --polling=N Set the polling interval to N (in seconds) when the dataset will be checked for appended data. The default polling interval is 1.
- --fields=<list_of_fields> Display data for the fields specified in <list_of_fields> for a compound data type. <list_of_fields> can be specified as follows:
  - 1) A comma-separated list of field names in a compound data type. "," is the separator for field names while "." is the separator for a nested field.
  - 2) A single field name in a compound data type. This option can be used multiple times.
  Note that backslash is the escape character to avoid characters in field names that conflict with the tool's separators.

## Object

OBJECT is specified as [<filename>/<path_to_dataset>/<dsetname>]

- <filename> Name of the HDF5 file. It may be preceded by path separated by slashes to the specified HDF5 file.
- <path_to_dataset> Path separated by slashes to the specified dataset
- <dsetname> Name of the dataset

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