Why Is Istream/Ostream Slow

Why is istream/ostream slow

Actually, IOStreams don't have to be slow! It is a matter of implementing them in a reasonable way to make them fast, though. Most standard C++ library don't seem to pay too much attention to implement IOStreams. A long time ago when my CXXRT was still maintained it was about as fast as stdio - when used correctly!

Note that there are few performance traps for users laid out with IOStreams, however. The following guidelines apply to all IOStream implementations but especially to those which are tailored to be fast:

1. When using std::cin, std::cout, etc. you need to call std::sync_with_stdio(false)! Without this call, any use of the standard stream objects is required to synchronize with C's standard streams. Of course, when using std::sync_with_stdio(false) it is assumed that you don't mix std::cin with stdin, std::cout with stdout, etc.
2. Do not use std::endl as it mandates many unnecessary flushes of any buffer. Likewise, don't set std::ios_base::unitbuf or use std::flush unnecessarily.
3. When creating your own stream buffers (OK, few users do), make sure they do use an internal buffer! Processing individual characters jumps through multiple conditions and a virtual function which makes it hideously slow.

How to get IOStream to perform better?

Here is what I have gathered so far:

Buffering:

If by default the buffer is very small, increasing the buffer size can definitely improve the performance:

• it reduces the number of HDD hits
• it reduces the number of system calls

Buffer can be set by accessing the underlying streambuf implementation.

char Buffer[N];

std::ifstream file("file.txt");

file.rdbuf()->pubsetbuf(Buffer, N);
// the pointer reader by rdbuf is guaranteed
// to be non-null after successful constructor

Warning courtesy of @iavr: according to cppreference it is best to call pubsetbuf before opening the file. Various standard library implementations otherwise have different behaviors.

Locale Handling:

Locale can perform character conversion, filtering, and more clever tricks where numbers or dates are involved. They go through a complex system of dynamic dispatch and virtual calls, so removing them can help trimming down the penalty hit.

The default C locale is meant not to perform any conversion as well as being uniform across machines. It's a good default to use.

Synchronization:

I could not see any performance improvement using this facility.

One can access a global setting (static member of std::ios_base) using the sync_with_stdio static function.

Measurements:

Playing with this, I have toyed with a simple program, compiled using gcc 3.4.2 on SUSE 10p3 with -O2.

C : 7.76532e+06

C++: 1.0874e+07

Which represents a slowdown of about 20%... for the default code. Indeed tampering with the buffer (in either C or C++) or the synchronization parameters (C++) did not yield any improvement.

Results by others:

@Irfy on g++ 4.7.2-2ubuntu1, -O3, virtualized Ubuntu 11.10, 3.5.0-25-generic, x86_64, enough ram/cpu, 196MB of several "find / >> largefile.txt" runs

C : 634572
C++: 473222

C++ 25% faster

@Matteo Italia on g++ 4.4.5, -O3, Ubuntu Linux 10.10 x86_64 with a random 180 MB file

C : 910390

C++: 776016

C++ 17% faster

@Bogatyr on g++ i686-apple-darwin10-g++-4.2.1 (GCC) 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5664), mac mini, 4GB ram, idle except for this test with a 168MB datafile

C : 4.34151e+06

C++: 9.14476e+06

C++ 111% slower

@Asu on clang++ 3.8.0-2ubuntu4, Kubuntu 16.04 Linux 4.8-rc3, 8GB ram, i5 Haswell, Crucial SSD, 88MB datafile (tar.xz archive)

C : 270895
C++: 162799

C++ 66% faster

So the answer is: it's a quality of implementation issue, and really depends on the platform :/

The code in full here for those interested in benchmarking:

#include <fstream>
#include <iostream>
#include <iomanip>

#include <cmath>
#include <cstdio>

#include <sys/time.h>

template <typename Func>
double benchmark(Func f, size_t iterations)
{
  f();

  timeval a, b;
  gettimeofday(&a, 0);
  for (; iterations --> 0;)
  {
    f();
  }
  gettimeofday(&b, 0);
  return (b.tv_sec * (unsigned int)1e6 + b.tv_usec) -
         (a.tv_sec * (unsigned int)1e6 + a.tv_usec);
}

struct CRead
{
  CRead(char const* filename): _filename(filename) {}

  void operator()() {
    FILE* file = fopen(_filename, "r");

    int count = 0;
    while ( fscanf(file,"%s", _buffer) == 1 ) { ++count; }

    fclose(file);
  }

  char const* _filename;
  char _buffer[1024];
};

struct CppRead
{
  CppRead(char const* filename): _filename(filename), _buffer() {}

  enum { BufferSize = 16184 };

  void operator()() {
    std::ifstream file(_filename, std::ifstream::in);

    // comment to remove extended buffer
    file.rdbuf()->pubsetbuf(_buffer, BufferSize);

    int count = 0;
    std::string s;
    while ( file >> s ) { ++count; }
  }

  char const* _filename;
  char _buffer[BufferSize];
};

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
  size_t iterations = 1;
  if (argc > 1) { iterations = atoi(argv[1]); }

  char const* oldLocale = setlocale(LC_ALL,"C");
  if (strcmp(oldLocale, "C") != 0) {
    std::cout << "Replaced old locale '" << oldLocale << "' by 'C'\n";
  }

  char const* filename = "largefile.txt";

  CRead cread(filename);
  CppRead cppread(filename);

  // comment to use the default setting
  bool oldSyncSetting = std::ios_base::sync_with_stdio(false);

  double ctime = benchmark(cread, iterations);
  double cpptime = benchmark(cppread, iterations);

  // comment if oldSyncSetting's declaration is commented
  std::ios_base::sync_with_stdio(oldSyncSetting);

  std::cout << "C  : " << ctime << "\n"
               "C++: " << cpptime << "\n";

  return 0;
}

need for deriving iostream from istream and ostream

Exactly by making iostream inherit from istream and from ostream you get a class that supports input and output and both interfaces (from istream and ostream). That doesn't mean that functionality is duplicated, it just means that the interfaces of istream and ostream and their implementation is being reused.

Is std::ifstream significantly slower than FILE?

I don't think that'd make a difference. Especially if you're reading char by char, the overhead of I/O is likely to completely dominate anything else.
Why do you read single bytes at a time? You know how extremely inefficient it is?

On a 326kb file, the fastest solution will most likely be to just read it into memory at once.

The difference between std::ifstream and the C equivalents, is basically a virtual function call or two. It may make a difference if executed a few tens of million times per second, otherwise, not reall. file I/O is generally so slow that the API used to access it doesn't really matter. What matters far more is the read/write pattern. Lots of seeks are bad, sequential reads/writes good.

Why does std::copy (from istream to ostream) raises an ios::failure exception?

To avoid skipping white space use the std::istreambuf_iterator

std::copy(std::istreambuf_iterator<wchar_t, wchar_t>(is),
          std::istreambuf_iterator<wchar_t, wchar_t>(),
          std::ostream_iterator<wchar_t, wchar_t>(std::wcout));

The exception:

The local may be using codecvt facet that is failing.

Try commenting out the locale line see what happens.

Have you tried to print what the exceptions is?

try
{
    // do work
}
catch(std::exception const& e)
{
    std::cout << e.what() << "\n";
}

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