[Nexus-developers] NeXus linking, Java

[Akeroyd, FA (Freddie)]

> High,
>
> As promised I looked into the issue of linking items with a different 
> name in NeXus. The results:
> - Works in HDF-5
> - Works - XML
> - Does NOT work in HDF-4. In HDF-4 a group is implemented as a list of

> reference ID's and the name is
> an attribute of the object itself. In HDF-4 a renamed link can only be

> implemented by copying the data.
>
Mark,

We could emulate renamed links in HDF4 to avoid a copy by using the same
system that the XML interface uses (create a special variable of type
NAPIlink that the API knows to follow properly). This does mean that a
pure HDF4 program would not be able to follow the link, but it has the
advantage that you could convert a file from HDF5 -> HDF4 -> HDF5 and
get exactly the same file structure back.  

Freddie