The GNU C Library - Controlling Buffering

Controlling Which Kind of Buffering

After opening a stream (but before any other operations have been performed on it), you can explicitly specify what kind of buffering you want it to have using the setvbuf function.

The facilities listed in this section are declared in the header file `stdio.h'.

Function int setvbuf (FILE *stream, char *buf, int mode, size_t size)

This function is used to specify that the stream stream should have the buffering mode mode, which can be either _IOFBF (for full buffering), _IOLBF (for line buffering), or _IONBF (for unbuffered input/output).

If you specify a null pointer as the buf argument, then setvbuf allocates a buffer itself using malloc . This buffer will be freed when you close the stream.

Otherwise, buf should be a character array that can hold at least size characters. You should not free the space for this array as long as the stream remains open and this array remains its buffer. You should usually either allocate it statically, or malloc (see Unconstrained Allocation) the buffer. Using an automatic array is not a good idea unless you close the file before exiting the block that declares the array.

While the array remains a stream buffer, the stream I/O functions will use the buffer for their internal purposes. You shouldn't try to access the values in the array directly while the stream is using it for buffering.

The setvbuf function returns zero on success, or a nonzero value if the value of mode is not valid or if the request could not be honored.

Macro int _IOFBF

The value of this macro is an integer constant expression that can be used as the mode argument to the setvbuf function to specify that the stream should be fully buffered.

Macro int _IOLBF

The value of this macro is an integer constant expression that can be used as the mode argument to the setvbuf function to specify that the stream should be line buffered.

Macro int _IONBF

The value of this macro is an integer constant expression that can be used as the mode argument to the setvbuf function to specify that the stream should be unbuffered.

Macro int BUFSIZ

The value of this macro is an integer constant expression that is good to use for the size argument to setvbuf . This value is guaranteed to be at least 256 .

The value of BUFSIZ is chosen on each system so as to make stream I/O efficient. So it is a good idea to use BUFSIZ as the size for the buffer when you call setvbuf .

Actually, you can get an even better value to use for the buffer size by means of the fstat system call: it is found in the st_blksize field of the file attributes. See Attribute Meanings.

Sometimes people also use BUFSIZ as the allocation size of buffers used for related purposes, such as strings used to receive a line of input with fgets (see Character Input). There is no particular reason to use BUFSIZ for this instead of any other integer, except that it might lead to doing I/O in chunks of an efficient size.

Function void setbuf (FILE *stream, char *buf)

If buf is a null pointer, the effect of this function is equivalent to calling setvbuf with a mode argument of _IONBF . Otherwise, it is equivalent to calling setvbuf with buf, and a mode of _IOFBF and a size argument of BUFSIZ .

The setbuf function is provided for compatibility with old code; use setvbuf in all new programs.

Function void setbuffer (FILE *stream, char *buf, size_t size)

If buf is a null pointer, this function makes stream unbuffered. Otherwise, it makes stream fully buffered using buf as the buffer. The size argument specifies the length of buf.

This function is provided for compatibility with old BSD code. Use setvbuf instead.

Function void setlinebuf (FILE *stream)

This function makes stream be line buffered, and allocates the buffer for you.

This function is provided for compatibility with old BSD code. Use setvbuf instead.