h5forest

HDF5 Forest (h5forest) is a Text-based User Interface (TUI) for exploring HDF5 files.

h5ls works, and h5glance is a great improvement, so "Why bother?" I hear you ask.

Well, h5forest brings interactivity and new functionality not available in its long-standing brethren. h5forest includes:

• An interactive interface capable of handling large files with deep hierarchies.
• Real-time metadata and attribute displays.
• A modal system for interacting with the file (I use Neovim by the way).
• Lazy loading, making the most of chunked data.
• Peeking inside Datasets.
• Computing statistics on the fly.
• Generation of quick diagnostics.
• Fully asynchronous operation for a blazingly fast (🔥) and responsive feel.

The following features are coming soon:

• A search function.
• Renaming of Datasets and Groups.

Getting started

h5forest can be installed through pip:

pip install h5forest

You will now have the h5forest command installed. Simply run

h5forest /path/to/hdf5/file.hdf5

on the command line to get started exploring a file.

Testimonials

"This is the most compelling and useful procrastination I've ever seen" - Frustrated collaborator waiting for actual work to be done.

"Why has no one done this before? Let’s nominate him for a peerage." - Professor incapable of peerage nomination.

"Nice" - Previous supervisor.