Alternatives to getc(3C) and putc(3C)

An additional problem occurs with standard I/O. Programmers are accustomed to routines such as getc(3C) and putc(3C) being very quick—they are implemented as macros. Because of this, they can be used within the inner loop of a program with no concerns about efficiency.

However, when they are made thread safe they suddenly become more expensive—they now require (at least) two internal subroutine calls, to lock and unlock a mutex.

To get around this problem, alternative versions of these routines are supplied, getc_unlocked(3S) and putc_unlocked(3C).

These do not acquire locks on a mutex and so are as quick as the original, nonthread-safe versions of getc(3C) and putc(3C).

However, to use them in a thread-safe way, you must explicitly lock and release the mutexes that protect the standard I/O streams, using flockfile(3C) and funlockfile(3C). The calls to these latter routines are placed outside the loop, and the calls to getc_unlocked() or putc_unlocked() are placed inside the loop.