Accessing Keys as Class Attributes

In order to access a dict key as a class attribute for a Group or a Metadata item or the fieldname of a numpy structured array for a Dataset, then the following naming rules must be followed:

• the name matches the regular-expression pattern ^[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9_]*$ — which states that the name must begin with a letter and is followed by zero or more alphanumeric characters or underscores

• the name cannot be equal to any of the following:

  • clear
  • copy
  • fromkeys
  • get
  • items
  • keys
  • pop
  • popitem
  • read_only
  • setdefault
  • update
  • values