Thread: Bufsiz

Running Windows, I'm using gcc as provided by Strawberry Perl.

If I #define BUFSIZ 1024, I get a warning that in stdio.h it is already
defined as 512.

No problem, really. I can still redefine it or just use another word such as BUFSIZE.

But I wonder why it is already defined. Is it because this is an
optimal buffer size for disk I/O?

My program is a small one, but it might read numerous files successively (by means of wildcard expansion), including large files. I can easily use a larger buffer if it would improve performance. But perhaps there is no point.

What do you recommend?

Originally Posted by Salem

BUFSIZ is defined in stdio.h and is equal to the default size passed to setbuf.

Unless you're expecting excessively long lines in any of your files, just declaring char buff[BUFSIZ] should be fine.

Thanks! My program reads the files in binary mode. It makes no difference whether they are binary files or not.

From what I can grasp, if I don't call setbuf, then the system uses its own buffer and copies data to the buffer my program has allocated; but
with setbuf, disk input goes directly to my buffer. Am I correct? Setbuf would then be advisable. If the size is a multiple of BUFSIZ, it probably wouldn't hurt, but might not provide a benefit, either.