• Florian Sonnenberger (11/11) May 09 2005 Simple question:
• Ben Hinkle (10/21) May 09 2005 BufferedFiles can be flushed, too (it writes the buffer contents to the ...

Florian Sonnenberger <nairolf online.de> writes:

Simple question:
When should I use what?

-File for small files (Saved settings in .ini files) ?
-BufferedFile for big files that get changed frequently (Logfiles) ?
-MmFile for very big files (Database files) ?

And another:
What is the difference between buffered files and memory-mapped files?
MmFiles can be flush()ed, BufferedFiles can't, I know. But is this 
really the only reason why MmFile is seperated from the other file classes?

Thanks,
Florian

"Ben Hinkle" <bhinkle mathworks.com> writes:

"Florian Sonnenberger" <nairolf online.de> wrote in message 
news:d5odq6$1b52$1 digitaldaemon.com...
 Simple question:
 When should I use what?

 -File for small files (Saved settings in .ini files) ?
 -BufferedFile for big files that get changed frequently (Logfiles) ?
 -MmFile for very big files (Database files) ?

 And another:
 What is the difference between buffered files and memory-mapped files?
 MmFiles can be flush()ed, BufferedFiles can't, I know. But is this really 
 the only reason why MmFile is seperated from the other file classes?

 Thanks,
 Florian

BufferedFiles can be flushed, too (it writes the buffer contents to the OS 
file). To me the biggest difference is that you can't change the length of a 
mem-mapped file but you can grow a BufferedFile. Another difference that 
probably shouldn't be there is that a MmFile must be mapped all at once - it 
doesn't support mapping a small window of the backing file. A BufferedFile 
only buffers a small (8K or so) window of the backing file. OSes that I know 
allow mem-mapped files to map a portion of the backing file but MmFile 
always seems to map the whole thing.