[Discuss-gnuradio] Notion of buffering up input data in GNURadio

[yanilkumar2710]

‎I have a block that involves collecting samples in a buffer, once buffer is full, start processing the data (slide a window over it etc etc). 

My question is how does this whole concept of buffering work?  Can I say I need len(buffer) number of samples (assuming that buffer is the name of the array over which I slide my window etc) i‎n the forecast function and then just copy input_items[0]  into buffer in every work call? What if in some iterations I don't need to copy len(buffer) elements? For example if I only need to copy one or two window lengths worth data while other windows are still under process. Can I still do that?

My second question is, how do I account for the data that comes in while I'm still processing data in buffer? Do I need a second buffer to accumulate subsequent data while processing buffer is full? 

Thanks for your time

Anil