HDFGroup / HDFGroup/hdf5

Provide more detailed information on failure to traverse an external link

Open
#1,431 0 comments 1 reaction 1 assignee Claimed by @jhendersonHDF View on GitHub
Component - C Library
Dominant language
C
Stars
988
Forks
355
Avg merge
4d 2h
Merged PRs (30d)
12

Description

According to [this report](https://forum.hdfgroup.org/t/can-we-use-external-links-to-read-only-data-in-writable-files/9390/5) it appears that the library does not distinguish between failed external link traversal due to file access mode `EACCES (Permission denied)` or file existence `ENOENT (No such file or directory)`. The error message in both cases reads:
```
#008: ../../../src/H5Fint.c line 738 in H5F_prefix_open_file(): unable to open file, file name = 'target.h5', temp_file_name = 'target.h5'
major: File accessibilty
minor: Unable to open file
```
which, in this case, is ambiguous. How can we to provide more detailed error information to remove this kind of ambiguity?

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Assessment

This issue has not been assessed yet.

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.