title: reading HDF5-format MATLAB file in python with h5py
body: <p>I am trying to read a HDF5-format MATLAB file in python, using the h5py library. This file is called "Q_visSDF_accurate.mat" and has two keys: "filename" and "sdf". "filename contains a cell array strings. "sdf" is a  [6001, 49380] matrix containing floats. I had no problem to extract the variable sdf using the following code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>import h5py
  data = h5py.File("Q_visSDF_accurate.mat", 'r')
  sdf = data.get("sdf")[:,:]
  sdf = sdf.astype(float)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However, I cant read the filename variable. I tried:</p>
  
  <pre><code>filename = data.get("filename")[0]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but the code returns:</p>
  
  <pre><code>array([&lt;HDF5 object reference&gt;, &lt;HDF5 object reference&gt;,
     &lt;HDF5 object reference&gt;, ..., &lt;HDF5 object reference&gt;,
     &lt;HDF5 object reference&gt;, &lt;HDF5 object reference&gt;], dtype=object)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I can I de-reference the containt of the filename variable? Using the hdf5storage package is not a solution, as it works only for python 32 bits and can only read a subset of matlab variables. </p>