# Implementing a simple circular buffer8

Posted by Doug Hull,

Internet explorer users: Please follow the permalink at the bottom of this post to see the correct video… We are working on this! Sorry! I frequent StackOverflow.com answering MATLAB question. Here is the answer to one that recently went by. In this three minute video I show how to implement a circular buffer for keeping a limited time history. This is useful for keeping only the history that you need for a variable. A strip chart could be plotted from one of these.

Petter replied on : 1 of 8

Wouldn’t that solution force the entire array to be reshuffled every time a new value is added?

Daniel Armyr replied on : 2 of 8

Like Petter, I wonder if this should be considdered an efficient implementation or only an easy one?

I use a few rinbuffers here and there and they are all implemented like this, because it is easy. However, the line buffer = [newValue buffer(1:end-1)] gives the optimizer in me the shivers. Is that just me?

dhull replied on : 3 of 8

I profiled this with a really large amount of data, more iterations and longer buffer. That part of the video is on the “cutting room floor”. Basically, there is a negligible performance hit. To be a real test, it would need to be done in context to see if this architecture is a problem.

This video is in keeping with one of the central themes of my programming style: “Avoid premature optimization”. If I were to try and avoid the churn that this circular buffer goes through, the complexity and readability would suffer.

-Doug

Remco replied on : 4 of 8

Hi All,

I am not sure if this is still relevant but yes the discussed implementation is very inefficient. I have created a buffer class in matlab because I need multiple
circular buffers. This buffer class implements the buffer, display, and subsref functions in matlab code and the push_front and push_back functions in c code. This is because you cannot pass arguments by reference in Matlab. Matlab only makes a copy of the arguments when the arguments change inside a m file. But since you add an element to the buffer Matlab does make a copy. In a c mex implementation this does not happen and one can efficiently add a new element. Also I use a double length circular buffer to allow for linear adressing instead of circular buffer adressing

dhull replied on : 5 of 8

@Remco,

This is the kind of thing that makes an excellent MATLAB Central File Exchange entry if you are willing to share.

Thanks,
Doug

Remco—I recently implemented a double-ended queue class using a circular buffer. Because I subclassed handle, no data copies are made. My push_front and push_back (don’t remember if I actually used those names) manipulate an internal circular buffer directly. A copy gets made only when the buffer gets full and has to be resized, but that happens in a C++ implementation as well.

Rahul Chandail replied on : 7 of 8

For anyone who is looking to create a buffer “Matrix” instead of an Array(nx1 or 1xn matrix), the code can be modified to:

buffSize = 10;
circBuff = nan(3,buffSize);
for newest = 1:1000;
end

:D

Jens Henrik Göbbert replied on : 8 of 8

For a better circular buffer I implemented different ways to append values.
For small buffers using the simple method of copy-all is the fastest.
Depending on the buffer size I want to allow different append functions to be used, but it seems as if I cannot reach to the speed of the copy-all method if the buffer is a property of a class:

a) obj.raw = [ obj.raw(2:end,:); vec(:) ]
b) raw = [ raw(2:end,:); vec(:) ]


‘a’ takes twice as much time in matlab 2014a as ‘b':

It seems to me as if matlab makes an internal copy when using ‘a’, which it does not when using ‘b’.
But in OO programming I cannot avoid ‘a’ and switch to ‘b’.

Any idea how to speedup ‘a’?

What is 1 + 6?

Preview: hide

These postings are the author's and don't necessarily represent the opinions of MathWorks.