Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:46:07 -0700 (PDT) From: youshi10@u.washington.edu To: "Heiko Wundram (Beenic)" <wundram@beenic.net> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Large gap between fwrite and write, and fread and read Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.43.0707161746070.22217@hymn01.u.washington.edu> In-Reply-To: <200707170145.52781.wundram@beenic.net>
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On Tue, 17 Jul 2007, Heiko Wundram (Beenic) wrote: > On Monday 16 July 2007 14:06:57 Garrett Cooper wrote: >> I ran some tests and I noticed a large difference in the cumulative >> sums of fwrite(2) vs write(3) and fread(2) vs read(3) (3-fold >> differences on a real machine). > > This difference is at least partially explained when looking > at /usr/include/stdio.h, which defines the FILE structure: read/write on a > file descriptor is (pretty much) a direct syscall with operating system > specific semantics on a wide range of behavior, such as buffering, flushing > and seeking in read/write-opened files, whereas fread/fwrite on FILE*'s is > an "abstraction" of file access for which the stdio-API defines semantics, > such as buffering, the time flushing takes place and seeking in > read/write-opened files, across different flavors of POSIX-compatible libc's > equally. > > As the stdio-interface is a "wrapper" (with indirect calls calling the syscall > read at some point in time, see the FILE-structure definition), you'll have > to expect a difference in runtime, too. > > (You mixed up f{read,write}(3) and {read,write}(2), just as a sidenote, which > is also indicative of the difference: man3 is indicative of a libc > implementation, whereas man2 generally contains syscall documentation) > > -- > Heiko Wundram Yeah, that's what I meant. I was rather tired when I made that post at 5:30 this morning. Heh. Thank you for the additional info though. That was brief, but comprehensive :). -Garrett
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