A circular buffer is a fixed-size container that behaves as if its two ends were connected to form a virtual circular memory layout. Its main benefit is that you don't need a large amount of memory to retain data, as older entries are overwritten by newer ones. Circular buffers are used in I/O buffering, bounded logging (when you only want to retain the last messages), buffers for asynchronous processing, and others.
We can differentiate between two situations:
- The number of elements added to the buffer has not reached its capacity (its user-defined fixed size). In this case, it behaves likes a regular container, such as a vector.
- The number of elements added to the buffer has reached and exceeded its capacity. In ...
