overwrite in HDF5 format

Question

I've noticed the HDF5File command only has options to write and read. Is there a way to overwrite?

I have the following code.

fileName = "test1.h5"

steps = 5

hdf = HDF5File(mesh.mpi_comm(), fileName, "w")#mesh defined elsewhere
    hdf.write(mesh, "mesh")
    for i in range(steps):
        TimeStep() #function that takes a step in time
        hdf.write(fr_1,"frsol",i) #frsol is the solution from the TimeStep function

I'd like to modify this code so that if I run it again it deletes what was there before and writes new solutions. That way I don't have to look up the file, delete it, and then run the code.

Comments

Do you mean append instead of overwrite?

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I've edited the question to better explain what I'm trying to do. I'd like to write over the previous solution, not add more solutions to the file (append).

Answer 1

I'd like to modify this code so that if I run it again it deletes what was there before and writes new solutions. That way I don't have to look up the file, delete it, and then run the code.

Can you just delete the .h5 file whenever you run the script? Like this:

import os
fileName = "test1.h5"
try:
    os.remove(fileName)
except OSError:
    pass
# start doing things...
hdf = HDF5File(mesh.mpi_comm(), fileName, "w")

If you are running in parallel you may need to add an if statement to restrict the deletion to a single process and an MPI barrier to avoid a race condition, but unless I'm misunderstanding your question, this should basically do what you want.