89. Circular Buffer-I

Question.8

A firmware engineer replaces a linear UART receive buffer with a circular buffer. The old code used a linear array with a write index that reset to 0 after processing:

// Old: linear buffer
if (write_idx == BUF_SIZE) {
   process_buffer(buf, write_idx);
   write_idx = 0;
}

What problem does the circular buffer solve that the linear buffer cannot?

Need Help? Refer to the Quick Guide below

Select Answer

Circular buffers use less memory than linear buffers
Circular buffers allow continuous read/write without stopping to reset — new data can arrive while old data is being processed
Circular buffers are faster because they use modulo arithmetic
Linear buffers cannot store more than 256 bytes