Dokumentation

The class Stringbuffer composes single characters into a longer text that can be processed on block.

To make Stringbuffer as versatile as possible, the class does make assumptions about neither the underlying hardware, nor the meaning of "processing". When flush() is called (i.e., either on explicit request or once the buffer is full). To be hardware independent, flush() is to be implemented by the derived classes.

Hints for Implementation

Use a buffer of fixed size for caching characters, which should be accessible by derived classes. Keep in mind that the derived implementation of flush() will need to know about numbers of characters in the buffer.

Notes

Reason for the existence of this class is that generating longer texts is often implemented by assembly of small fragments (such as single characters or numbers). However, writing such small fragments directly to (for example) screen is quite inefficient (e.g., due to the use of IO ports, syscalls, or locks) and can be improved drastically by delaying the output step until the assembly is finished (or the buffer runs full).