mmap() vs. reading blocks

Question

I\'m working on a program that will be processing files that could potentially be 100GB or more in size. The files contain sets of variable length records. I\'ve got a first

Answer 1

I think the greatest thing about mmap is potential for asynchronous reading with:

    addr1 = NULL;
    while( size_left > 0 ) {
        r = min(MMAP_SIZE, size_left);
        addr2 = mmap(NULL, r,
            PROT_READ, MAP_FLAGS,
            0, pos);
        if (addr1 != NULL)
        {
            /* process mmap from prev cycle */
            feed_data(ctx, addr1, MMAP_SIZE);
            munmap(addr1, MMAP_SIZE);
        }
        addr1 = addr2;
        size_left -= r;
        pos += r;
    }
    feed_data(ctx, addr1, r);
    munmap(addr1, r);

Problem is that I can't find the right MAP_FLAGS to give a hint that this memory should be synced from file asap. I hope that MAP_POPULATE gives the right hint for mmap (i.e. it will not try to load all contents before return from call, but will do that in async. with feed_data). At least it gives better results with this flag even that manual states that it does nothing without MAP_PRIVATE since 2.6.23.