cstdio streams vs iostream streams?

Question

I just learned of the existence of the ios_base::sync_with_stdio function, which basically allows you to turn off (or on if you already turned it off) the synchronization between iostream streams that are used in C++ and the cstdio streams that are part of Standard C.

Now, I always thought that stdout, stderr and stdin in C were essentially wrapped in a set of objects in C++ in the iostreams classes. But if they have to be synchronized with each other, this would indicate that C++'s iostream classes are not a wrapper around C's stdin etc.

I'm quite confused by this? Can someone clarify how C++'s iostream and C's stdio are different things that do exactly the same thing, just at a different level of abstraction? I thought they were the same thing!?

How it is that they have to be synchronized? I always thought they were the same thing, one wrapping the other, essentially.

Answer 1

The C and C++ standards make no requirements on how things are implemented, just on what the effect of certain operations is. For the <stdio> vs. <iostream> functionality this means that one could wrap the other, both could be essentially the same, or that they are either entirely independent. Technically, using a common implementation would be ideal for several reasons (e.g. there would be no need for explicit synchronization and there would be a defined mechanism to extend FILE* for user defined systems) but I'm not aware of any system which actually does this. Having one implementation be a wrapper of the other is possible and implementing <iostream>s in terms of <stdio> was a typical implementation choice although it has the drawback that it introduces an extra cost for certain operations and most C++ standard libraries have moved on to use entirely separate implementations.

Unfortunately, both the wrapped and the independent implementation share a common problem: I/O is hideously inefficient when done one character level. Thus, it is essentially mandatory to buffer characters and read from or write to a buffer. This works nicely for streams which are independent of each other. The catch are the standard C streams stdin, stdout, stderr and their C++ narrow character counterparts std::cin, std::cout, std::cerr/std::clog and C++ wide character counterparts std::wcin, std::wcout, std::wcerr/std::wclog, respectively: what happens when a user reads both from stdin and std::cin? If either of these stream read a buffer of characters from the underlying OS stream the reads would appear out of order. Similarly, if both stdout and std::cout used independent buffers characters would appear in unexpected order when a user writes both to both streams. As a result, there are special rules on the standard C++ stream objects (i.e. std::cin, std::cout, std::cerr, and std::clog and their wide character counterparts) which mandate that they synchronize with their respective <stdio> counterpart. Effectively, this means that specifically these C++ objects either use a common implementation directly or that they are implemented in terms of <stdio> and don't buffer any characters.

It was realized that the cost of this synchronization is quite substantial if the implementations don't share a common base and may be unnecessary for some users: if a user only uses <iostream> he doesn't want to pay for the extra indirection and, more importantly, he doesn't want to pay for the extra costs imposed by not using a buffer. For careful implementations the cost of not using a buffer can be quite substantial because it means that certain operations end up having to do a check and possibly a virtual function call in each iteration rather than only once in a while. Thus, std::sync_with_stdio() can be used to turn this synchronization off which may mean that the standard stream objects change their internal implementation more or less entirely. Since the stream buffers of the standard stream objects can be replaced by a user, unfortunately, the stream buffers can't be replaced but the internal implementation of the stream buffer can be changed.

In good implementations of the <iostream> library all this only affects the standard stream objects. That is, file streams should be entirely unaffected by this. However, if you want to use the standard stream objects and want to achieve good performance you clearly don't want to mix <stdio> and <iostream> and you want to turn synchronization off. Especially, when comparing I/O performance between <stdio> and <iostream> you should be aware of this.

Answer 2

Actually the stdout, stderr and stdin are the file handlers of OS. And FILE structure of C as well as iostream classes of C++ are both wrappers of those file handlers. Both iostream classes and FILE structure may have their own buffers or something else that needs to be synchronized between each other to make sure that input from file or output to the file is done correctly.