Accessing individual characters in a file inefficient? (C++) - c++

Question

I've always assumed it to be more efficient, when processing text files, to first read the contents (or part of it) into an std::string or char array, as — from my limited understanding — files are read from memory in blocks much larger than the size of a single character. However, I've heard that modern OS's are often not actually directly reading from the file anyway, making my manually buffering the input little benefit.
Say I wanted to determine the number of a certain character in a text file. Would the following be inefficient?
while (fin.get(ch)) {
if (ch == 'n')
++char_count;
}
Granted, I guess it would depend on file size, but does anyone have any general rules about what's the best approach?

Answer 1

A great deal here depends on exactly how critical performance really is for you/your application. That, in turn tends to depend upon how large of files you're dealing with -- if you're dealing with something like tens or hundreds of kilobytes, you should generally just write the simplest code that will work, and not worry much about it -- anything you can do is going to be essentially instantaneous, so optimizing the code won't really accomplish much.
On the other hand, if you're processing a lot of data -- on the order of tens of megabytes or more, differences in efficiency can become fairly substantial. Unless you take fairly specific steps to bypass it (such as using read) all your reads are going to be buffered -- but that does not mean they'll all be the same speed (or necessarily even very close to the same speed).
For example, let's try a quick test of a few different methods for doing essentially what you've asked about:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <iomanip>
#include <iostream>
#include <iterator>
#include <fstream>
#include <time.h>
#include <string>
#include <algorithm>
unsigned count1(FILE *infile, char c) {
int ch;
unsigned count = 0;
while (EOF != (ch=getc(infile)))
if (ch == c)
++count;
return count;
}
unsigned int count2(FILE *infile, char c) {
static char buffer[4096];
int size;
unsigned int count = 0;
while (0 < (size = fread(buffer, 1, sizeof(buffer), infile)))
for (int i=0; i<size; i++)
if (buffer[i] == c)
++count;
return count;
}
unsigned count3(std::istream &infile, char c) {
return std::count(std::istreambuf_iterator<char>(infile),
std::istreambuf_iterator<char>(), c);
}
unsigned count4(std::istream &infile, char c) {
return std::count(std::istream_iterator<char>(infile),
std::istream_iterator<char>(), c);
}
template <class F, class T>
void timer(F f, T &t, std::string const &title) {
unsigned count;
clock_t start = clock();
count = f(t, 'N');
clock_t stop = clock();
std::cout << std::left << std::setw(30) << title << "\tCount: " << count;
std::cout << "\tTime: " << double(stop-start)/CLOCKS_PER_SEC << "\n";
}
int main() {
char const *name = "test input.txt";
FILE *infile=fopen(name, "r");
timer(count1, infile, "ignore");
rewind(infile);
timer(count1, infile, "using getc");
rewind(infile);
timer(count2, infile, "using fread");
fclose(infile);
std::ifstream in2(name);
in2.sync_with_stdio(false);
timer(count3, in2, "ignore");
in2.clear();
in2.seekg(0);
timer(count3, in2, "using streambuf iterators");
in2.clear();
in2.seekg(0);
timer(count4, in2, "using stream iterators");
return 0;
}
I ran this with a file of approximately 44 megabytes as input. When compiled with VC++2012, I got the following results:
ignore Count: 400000 Time: 2.08
using getc Count: 400000 Time: 2.034
using fread Count: 400000 Time: 0.257
ignore Count: 400000 Time: 0.607
using streambuf iterators Count: 400000 Time: 0.608
using stream iterators Count: 400000 Time: 5.136
Using the same input, but compiled with g++ 4.7.1:
ignore Count: 400000 Time: 0.359
using getc Count: 400000 Time: 0.339
using fread Count: 400000 Time: 0.243
ignore Count: 400000 Time: 0.697
using streambuf iterators Count: 400000 Time: 0.694
using stream iterators Count: 400000 Time: 1.612
So, even though all the reads are buffered, we're seeing a variation of about 8:1 with g++ and about 20:1 with VC++. Of course, I haven't tested (even close to) every possible way of reading the input. I doubt we'd see a lot wider range of times if we tested more techniques for reading, but I could be wrong about that. Whether we do or not, we're seeing enough variation that at least if you're processing a lot of data, you could well be justified in choosing one technique over another to improve processing speed.

Answer 2

No, your code is efficient. Files are intended to be read sequentially. Behind the scenes, a block of RAM is reserved in order to buffer the incoming stream of data. In fact, because you start processing data before the entire file has been read, your while loop ought to complete slightly sooner. Additionally, you can process a file far in excess of your computer's main RAM without trouble.
Edit: To my surprise, Jerry's number's pan out. I would have assumed that any efficiencies gained by reading and parsing in chunks would be dwarfed by the cost of reading from a file. I'd really like to know where that time is being spent and how much lower the variation is when the file is not cached. Nevertheless, I have to recommend Jerry's answer over this one, especially as he points out is that you really shouldn't worry about it until you know you have a performance problem.

Answer 3

It depends largely upon context, and since the context surrounding the code is absent it's difficult to say.
Make no mistake, your OS probably is caching at least a small part of the file for you, as others have said... However, going back and forth between user and kernel is expensive, and that's probably where your bottleneck is coming from.
If you were to insert fin.rdbuf()->pubsetbuf(NULL, 65536); before this code you might notice a significant speed-up. This is a hint to the standard library to attempt to read 65536 bytes from kernel at once, and save them for your use later on rather than going back and forth between user and kernel for every character.