Three kinds of buffering are supported: line-buffering,
block-buffering or no-buffering. These modes have the following
effects. For output, items are written out, or
flushed, from
the internal buffer according to the buffer mode:
- line-buffering: the entire output buffer is flushed
whenever a newline is output, the buffer overflows, a hFlush is
issued, or the handle is closed.
- block-buffering: the entire buffer is written out whenever
it overflows, a hFlush is issued, or the handle is closed.
- no-buffering: output is written immediately, and never
stored in the buffer.
An implementation is free to flush the buffer more frequently, but not
less frequently, than specified above. The output buffer is emptied as
soon as it has been written out.
Similarly, input occurs according to the buffer mode for the handle:
- line-buffering: when the buffer for the handle is not
empty, the next item is obtained from the buffer; otherwise, when the
buffer is empty, characters up to and including the next newline
character are read into the buffer. No characters are available until
the newline character is available or the buffer is full.
- block-buffering: when the buffer for the handle becomes
empty, the next block of data is read into the buffer.
- no-buffering: the next input item is read and returned. The
hLookAhead operation implies that even a no-buffered handle may
require a one-character buffer.
The default buffering mode when a handle is opened is
implementation-dependent and may depend on the file system object
which is attached to that handle. For most implementations, physical
files will normally be block-buffered and terminals will normally be
line-buffered.