12.6.7 BUFFERED Specifier

The BUFFERED specifier indicates run-time library behavior following WRITE operations. It takes the following form:

BUFFERED = bf

bf
Is a scalar default character expression that evaluates to one of the following values:

'NO'	Requests that the run-time library send output data to the file system after each WRITE operation.
'YES'	Requests that the run-time library accumulate output data in its internal buffer, possibly across several WRITE operations, before the data is sent to the file system. Buffering may improve run-time performance for output-intensive applications.

The default is 'NO'.

On OpenVMS, BUFFERED has no effect. The operating system automatically performs buffering, which can be affected by the values of the BUFFERCOUNT and BUFFERSIZE keywords when the file is opened.