Set or retrieve buffer size in kbytes for file access buffer. Only used on win32 platform. The value 0 indicates the default. The value of this default may become platform platform dependent in the future. For the win32 platform we chose 256 kbyte. The buffer size is effected when a file is actually opened by the library. At that time, the current buffer size is used. Applications may set this value at initialization. It is used when opening a file to determine the size of the file access buffer. This allows performance optimization. Typical use is on high performance disk systems like 6 raid scsi disks mounted as a single striped volume. Small values: system file access rate increases (hence an interrupt penalty may become dominant, resulting in reduced performance). High values: data access overhead for random access (hence for random access too much data is read but not used resulting in poor random access behavior).
