vbuf

Virtual Ring Buffer library - shell interface

The Virtual Ring Buffer (VRB) is an implementation of a character FIFO ring buffer. A ring buffer is a special memory area, because writing beyond the end of it actually results in a write at the beginning. Such a construct comes very handy in applications where one end of a communications channel is required to produce or consume data at a constant rate, but the other end cannot gurantee this. This is a common situation in multimedia applications or Voice-over-IP solutions, for example. VRB provides direct access to the buffer so the calling program can construct output data in place, or parse input data in place, without the extra step of copying data to or from a calling program provided buffer area, thus provides a highly efficient ring buffer implementation. This package contains the program vbuf, which implements nothing but a simple ring buffer, so it can be used directly from the shell.