title: Pandas and h5py load the same data (ndarray) differently
body: <p>I have a file in <a href="https://hdfgroup.org/HDF5/" rel="nofollow">HDF5</a> format.  It was created using the HDF5's C++ API using these:</p>
  
  <pre><code>struct SignalDefH5
  {
      char  id   [128];
      char  name [ 64];
      char  units[ 16];
      float min;
      float max;
      hvl_t tags; /* This right there does not work in Pandas... */
  };
  
  struct TagDefH5
  {
      char  tag [ 64];
      char  desc[256];
  };
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>If I load the file using <a href="http://www.h5py.org/" rel="nofollow">h5py</a>, I get this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; import h5py
  &gt;&gt;&gt; hfile = h5py.File('test.h5', 'r')
  &gt;&gt;&gt; signals = hfile['/signals']
  &gt;&gt;&gt; signals[0]
  ('id1', 'a pressure', 'bar', 0.0, 300.0, ['Pressure'])
  &gt;&gt;&gt; type(signals[0][5])
  numpy.ndarray
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However, if I use <a href="http://pandas.pydata.org" rel="nofollow">Pandas</a> to load the same file, I get this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; store = pd.HDFStore('test.h5')
  &gt;&gt;&gt; store.root.signals
  /signals (Table(179,)) ''
    description := {
    "id": StringCol(itemsize=128, shape=(), dflt='', pos=0),
    "name": StringCol(itemsize=64, shape=(), dflt='', pos=1),
    "units": StringCol(itemsize=16, shape=(), dflt='', pos=2),
    "min": Float32Col(shape=(), dflt=0.0, pos=3),
    "max": Float32Col(shape=(), dflt=0.0, pos=4),
    "tags": StringCol(itemsize=64, shape=(), dflt='', pos=5)}
    byteorder := 'little'
    chunkshape := (234,)
  &gt;&gt;&gt; store.root.signals[0]
  ('id1', 'a pressure', 'bar', 0.0, 300.0, '\x02\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\xf0f\x1e\x04\x00\x00\x00\x00\xba\nVT\xd1!\xa7\xdd\xb0\xe3\x9a\x02\x00\x00\x00\x00@\xecR\x1f\xa2\x7f\x00\x00}B\x178\x96\xa4u\xe6\xb0\xdd\x7f\x02\x00\x00\x00\x00 \x01')
  &gt;&gt;&gt; type(store.root.signals[0][5])
  numpy.string_
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Clearly there is a problem with the <a href="http://pandas.pydata.org" rel="nofollow">Pandas</a> way: <em>what did I do wrong?</em></p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Python version is 2.7.5.</li>
  <li>h5py version is 2.4.0.</li>
  <li>Pandas version is 0.16.0.</li>
  <li>PyTables version is 3.1.1.</li>
  </ul>