writebuffer(1)

💾 writebuffer — the manual page, but make it cute

okay bestie, welcome to writebuffer(1) ✨ it's a little program from the General Commands Manual and honestly? it's giving patient queen. it does one thing and it does it slayfully.

🌸 NAME 🌸

writebuffer — write output to devices which don't like constant stopping and starting 🫶

like fr, some devices are sensitive and you gotta be gentle with them.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

writebuffer [--mlock] [size]

that's it. that's the whole vibe. one optional flag, one optional size, and a whole lot of buffering 💅

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so here's the tea, bestie 🍓: writebuffer reads data on standard input and writes it to standard output.

but — and this is the main character moment — it does NOT just yeet every little bit straight through. nope. it buffers internally up to size megabytes, and it will only write data when:

• the buffer is at least 75% full 🌈, OR
• there is no more input to fill the buffer 😭

periodt. that's the whole algorithm. it waits, it accumulates, it releases at the right time. discipline. iconic.

and now the cute part: size may also be suffixed with m, k, or b to indicate that it is in:

• megabytes (2^20) — that's the m bestie
• kilobytes (2^10) — that's the k
• bytes — that's the b, no maths required, just raw little guys 💀

so you can say what you mean and the numbers stay exactly the numbers they are. no vibes-based rounding here, we're being precise ✨

💡 why does this exist tho

it is intended for use in situations where many small writes are undesirable for performance reasons, e.g. tape drives 📼

like, imagine asking a tape drive to stop and start a thousand times a second. the AUDACITY. she would simply pass away. so instead you let writebuffer collect everything up and hand it over in one big gorgeous chunk. respectful. considerate. wife material. 👑

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• --mlock — calls mlock(2) to lock the buffer into memory 🔒

that's it, that's the only flag, and she's thriving. no cap. if you want your buffer pinned in memory and not going anywhere, this is your girl 🫶

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• readbuffer(1) — the other half of the friendship duo 🫂
• mlock(2) — the syscall that --mlock is out here calling 💫

🎀 reminder bestie: the description says writes happen at 75% full or when there's no more input. not before. not whenever it feels like it. she's consistent and we love that for her.

and that's the whole page, bestie 💖 this was the chiark-backup era, dated 2001-10-21 — so yeah, she's an elder icon, been slaying since before some of us were born 😭🌸 ily, go buffer something responsibly ✨🦋