How would you code an efficient Circular Buffer in Java or C#?
I would use an array of T, a head and tail pointer, and add and get methods.
Like: (Bug hunting is left to the user)
// Hijack these for simplicity
import java.nio.BufferOverflowException;
import java.nio.BufferUnderflowException;
public class CircularBuffer<T> {
private T[] buffer;
private int tail;
private int head;
@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
public CircularBuffer(int n) {
buffer = (T[]) new Object[n];
tail = 0;
head = 0;
}
public void add(T toAdd) {
if (head != (tail - 1)) {
buffer[head++] = toAdd;
} else {
throw new BufferOverflowException();
}
head = head % buffer.length;
}
public T get() {
T t = null;
int adjTail = tail > head ? tail - buffer.length : tail;
if (adjTail < head) {
t = (T) buffer[tail++];
tail = tail % buffer.length;
} else {
throw new BufferUnderflowException();
}
return t;
}
public String toString() {
return "CircularBuffer(size=" + buffer.length + ", head=" + head + ", tail=" + tail + ")";
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
CircularBuffer<String> b = new CircularBuffer<String>(3);
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
System.out.println("Start: " + b);
b.add("One");
System.out.println("One: " + b);
b.add("Two");
System.out.println("Two: " + b);
System.out.println("Got '" + b.get() + "', now " + b);
b.add("Three");
System.out.println("Three: " + b);
// Test Overflow
// b.add("Four");
// System.out.println("Four: " + b);
System.out.println("Got '" + b.get() + "', now " + b);
System.out.println("Got '" + b.get() + "', now " + b);
// Test Underflow
// System.out.println("Got '" + b.get() + "', now " + b);
// Back to start, let's shift on one
b.add("Foo");
b.get();
}
}
}
This is how I would (or did) write an efficient circular buffer in Java. It's backed by a simple array. For my particular use case, I needed high concurrent throughput, so I used CAS for allocation of the index. I then created mechanisms for reliable copies including a CAS copy of the entire buffer. I used this in a case which is outlined in greater detail in short article.
import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicLong;
import java.lang.reflect.Array;
/**
* A circular array buffer with a copy-and-swap cursor.
*
* <p>This class provides an list of T objects who's size is <em>unstable</em>.
* It's intended for capturing data where the frequency of sampling greatly
* outweighs the frequency of inspection (for instance, monitoring).</p>
*
* <p>This object keeps in memory a fixed size buffer which is used for
* capturing objects. It copies the objects to a snapshot array which may be
* worked with. The size of the snapshot array will vary based on the
* stability of the array during the copy operation.</p>
*
* <p>Adding buffer to the buffer is <em>O(1)</em>, and lockless. Taking a
* stable copy of the sample is <em>O(n)</em>.</p>
*/
public class ConcurrentCircularBuffer <T> {
private final AtomicLong cursor = new AtomicLong();
private final T[] buffer;
private final Class<T> type;
/**
* Create a new concurrent circular buffer.
*
* @param type The type of the array. This is captured for the same reason
* it's required by {@link java.util.List.toArray()}.
*
* @param bufferSize The size of the buffer.
*
* @throws IllegalArgumentException if the bufferSize is a non-positive
* value.
*/
public ConcurrentCircularBuffer (final Class <T> type,
final int bufferSize)
{
if (bufferSize < 1) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException(
"Buffer size must be a positive value"
);
}
this.type = type;
this.buffer = (T[]) new Object [ bufferSize ];
}
/**
* Add a new object to this buffer.
*
* <p>Add a new object to the cursor-point of the buffer.</p>
*
* @param sample The object to add.
*/
public void add (T sample) {
buffer[(int) (cursor.getAndIncrement() % buffer.length)] = sample;
}
/**
* Return a stable snapshot of the buffer.
*
* <p>Capture a stable snapshot of the buffer as an array. The snapshot
* may not be the same length as the buffer, any objects which were
* unstable during the copy will be factored out.</p>
*
* @return An array snapshot of the buffer.
*/
public T[] snapshot () {
T[] snapshots = (T[]) new Object [ buffer.length ];
/* Determine the size of the snapshot by the number of affected
* records. Trim the size of the snapshot by the number of records
* which are considered to be unstable during the copy (the amount the
* cursor may have moved while the copy took place).
*
* If the cursor eliminated the sample (if the sample size is so small
* compared to the rate of mutation that it did a full-wrap during the
* copy) then just treat the buffer as though the cursor is
* buffer.length - 1 and it was not changed during copy (this is
* unlikley, but it should typically provide fairly stable results).
*/
long before = cursor.get();
/* If the cursor hasn't yet moved, skip the copying and simply return a
* zero-length array.
*/
if (before == 0) {
return (T[]) Array.newInstance(type, 0);
}
System.arraycopy(buffer, 0, snapshots, 0, buffer.length);
long after = cursor.get();
int size = buffer.length - (int) (after - before);
long snapshotCursor = before - 1;
/* Highly unlikely, but the entire buffer was replaced while we
* waited...so just return a zero length array, since we can't get a
* stable snapshot...
*/
if (size <= 0) {
return (T[]) Array.newInstance(type, 0);
}
long start = snapshotCursor - (size - 1);
long end = snapshotCursor;
if (snapshotCursor < snapshots.length) {
size = (int) snapshotCursor + 1;
start = 0;
}
/* Copy the sample snapshot to a new array the size of our stable
* snapshot area.
*/
T[] result = (T[]) Array.newInstance(type, size);
int startOfCopy = (int) (start % snapshots.length);
int endOfCopy = (int) (end % snapshots.length);
/* If the buffer space wraps the physical end of the array, use two
* copies to construct the new array.
*/
if (startOfCopy > endOfCopy) {
System.arraycopy(snapshots, startOfCopy,
result, 0,
snapshots.length - startOfCopy);
System.arraycopy(snapshots, 0,
result, (snapshots.length - startOfCopy),
endOfCopy + 1);
}
else {
/* Otherwise it's a single continuous segment, copy the whole thing
* into the result.
*/
System.arraycopy(snapshots, startOfCopy,
result, 0, endOfCopy - startOfCopy + 1);
}
return (T[]) result;
}
/**
* Get a stable snapshot of the complete buffer.
*
* <p>This operation fetches a snapshot of the buffer using the algorithm
* defined in {@link snapshot()}. If there was concurrent modification of
* the buffer during the copy, however, it will retry until a full stable
* snapshot of the buffer was acquired.</p>
*
* <p><em>Note, for very busy buffers on large symmetric multiprocessing
* machines and supercomputers running data processing intensive
* applications, this operation has the potential of being fairly
* expensive. In practice on commodity hardware, dualcore processors and
* non-processing intensive systems (such as web services) it very rarely
* retries.</em></p>
*
* @return A full copy of the internal buffer.
*/
public T[] completeSnapshot () {
T[] snapshot = snapshot();
/* Try again until we get a snapshot that's the same size as the
* buffer... This is very often a single iteration, but it depends on
* how busy the system is.
*/
while (snapshot.length != buffer.length) {
snapshot = snapshot();
}
return snapshot;
}
/**
* The size of this buffer.
*/
public int size () {
return buffer.length;
}
}
Here is a ready-to-use CircularArrayList implementation for Java which I use in production code. By overriding AbstractList in the Java-recommended way, it supports all functionality you would expect from a standard List implementation in the Java Collections Framework (generic element type, subList, iteration etc.).
The following calls complete in O(1):
- add(item) - adds at end of list
- remove(0) - removes from beginning of list
- get(i) - retrieves random element in list
I would use ArrayBlockingQueue or one of the other prebuilt Queue implementations, depending on what the needs are. Very rarely there is need to implement such a data structure yourself (unless it's a school assignment).
EDIT: Now that you have added the requirement "to retrieve any element in the buffer by index", I suppose that you need to implement your own class (unless google-collections or some other library provides one). A circular buffer is quite easy to implement, as JeeBee's example shows. You may also look at ArrayBlockingQueue's source code - its code is quite clean, just remove the locking and unneeded methods, and add methods for accessing it by index.