HDF5: can overwrite vectors but not scalars

[ghost]

Hi everyone, I am using Julia's wonderful HDF5 library. I have come across a kind of strange issue: it seems possible to overwrite vectors, but not scalars. There are some workarounds, like using mid-level routines such as o_delete, or just creating a vector to begin with, but I'm still a bit surprised by this behavior. I am wondering if anyone has any insight to share into this? My apologies if the answer is obvious; I am trained in statistics rather than CS, but my attempts to find a solution in the docs and newsgroups have not been successful so far.

create a vector and a scalar

a=[1,2]
b=1

save using julia's hdf5 library

using HDF5
filepath="~/test.h5"
h5open(filepath, "w") do fid
fid["a"] =a
fid["b"]=b
end

try to rewrite using HDF structure directly

f=h5open(filepath,"r+")
names(f)
f["a"][:]=[1,3] #works
f["b"]=1 #fails
f["b"][:]=1 #fails
f["b"][1]=1 #fails
close(f)

[ggggggggg]

I think this is the nature of the HDF5 library, not of the Julia wrapper. Try the same in Python (I think h5py is supported by the HDF5 group directly). I think the only way to make this work would be to delete f["b"] then create a new f["b"].

[ggggggggg]

Can we close this as wontfix if I'm correct that this is a limitation of the HDF5 library?