What is the error message you are receiving?

Would it be possible to include a small bit of code that you are using the open the file?

Have you looked at IDL's H5_browser and H5 routines? http://www.exelisvis.com/docs/H5_BROW... http://www.exelisvis.com/docs/routine...

Trying on any of the files accessible from the link I posted above, I'm getting "Not a valid h5 file" result=H5_browser('SVM01_npp_d20120103_t0020159_e0021401_b00945_obpg_ops.h5') same thing with: result=H5_parse('SVM01_npp_d20120103_t0020159_e0021401_b00945_obpg_ops.h5',/read)

Do you have access to IDL 8.4? I believe they updated the libraries for HDF5. I downloaded the first file in your link and unpacked the HDF5 files. I could open them without error in IDL 8.4.

Matteo, Try using something like the following and specify the exact file path using root_dir as below. That worked for me. result=H5_browser(FILEPATH('SVM01_npp_d20120102_t2058156_e2059397_b00943_obpg_ops.h5', root_dir=['filepath goes here']))

Nope, not even including the root_dir works...still complaining that the file is not a valid HDF5 file. Would be nice if I had access to 8.4...

Are you using a customized library for the HDF5 functionality? I tested your code with the files in IDL7.1, 8.1, and 8.4.1 and it worked just fine. You may want to re-download the files and unzip them again in case it is corrupted somewhere. You could also to try and use H5_list, Dialog_pickfile() to explicitly choose the file you want to open and see if IDL can at least read the file.

It works on my Mac laptop too (7.1), weird! I notice now that HDFView doesn't open them either. I had already tried re-downloading and unpacking with both WinZIP and 7-ZIP, to no avail. With Level-2 H5 files I don't have any problem. No specialized libraries, just H5_parse. Dialog_pickfile() works, H5_LIST still gives me the same error message.