I am reading in large binary files (around 8MB) which contain records 1034 bytes long. My goal is to create a spreadsheet file that presents the data contained in the binary file in a nice human-readable format. I accomplish this by reading one record at a time, parsing it, and then writing that line to the spreadsheet file. Here is a simplified portion of my code: 
#Read first record
$nNumBytesRead = read(FInputFile, $Data, 1034);

while($nNumBytesRead > 0)
{    
    #Reset Variables
    $nOffset = 0;
    @ItemList = ();

    #Read Frame-Sync    
    @FrameSyncBytes = unpack("ccc",substr($Data,$nOffset,3));
    $nOffset += 3;

    #Place text data into @ItemList using ReadStatic()
    ReadStatic(\@ItemList, \$nOffset, $U32, $U16, $Data, $SystemType);
            
    #Print static data to output spreadsheet file
    print FOutputFile ("\n",@ItemList);        
            
    # Read next record
    $nNumBytesRead = read(FInputFile, $Data, 1034);
}

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Notice that I write to FOutputFile every iteration. Is this an OK practice, or would it be worth it to setup a buffer so that I don't write to the disk as often?

In reply to Most efficient way to build output file? by iKnowNothing

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