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Asked: 2026-05-26T14:43:57+00:00

Is there a difference between HDF5 files and files created by PyTables ? PyTables

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Is there a difference between HDF5 files and files created by PyTables?

PyTables has two functions .isHDFfile() and .isPyTablesFile() suggesting that there
is a difference between the two formats.

I’ve done some looking around on Google and have gathered that PyTables is built on top of HDF, but I wasn’t able to find much beyond that.

I am specifically interested in interoperability, speed and overhead.

Thanks.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    PyTables files are HDF5 files.

    However, as I understand it, PyTables adds some extra metadata to the attributes of each entry in the HDF file.

    If you’re looking for a more “vanilla” hdf5 solution for python/numpy, have a look a h5py.

    It’s less database-like (i.e. less “table-like”) than PyTables, and doesn’t have as many nifty querying features, but it’s much more straight-forward, in my opinion. If you’re going to be accessing an hdf5 file from multiple different languages, h5py is probably a better route to take.

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