Buffered and Unbuffered File I/O

Buffered file I/O happens when there is a buffer for temporarily storing data before reading data or writing data. Thus, instead of reading a file byte by byte, we read many bytes at once. We put the data in a buffer and wait for someone to read it in the desired way.

Unbuffered file I/O happens when there is no buffer to temporarily store data before actually reading or writing it—this can affect the performance of our programs.