How to get a user-configurable buffer for printing?

Question

I'd like to have a print function supporting a user-configurable buffer, so to print what I have in the buffer only when the buffer is > a threshold).

I need to write multiple files, so I have multiple filehandles to write to, and for this an object oriented module might be handier.

I imagine something like this:

my $printer1 = Print::Buffer->new({ size => 1000, filehandle => \$OUT1 });

for (my $i=1; $i<1000; $i++) {
 $printer1->print("This string will be eventually printed ($i/1000)");
}
# and at the end print the remaining buffer
$printer1->flush();

Any recommendation? I probably don't use the right keywords as with print/buffer I didn't find clear matches in CPAN.

UPDATE: Thanks everyone for the very useful comments. As some of you pointed out, the problem is more complex than I initially thought, and probably a bad idea. (This question arose as I was printing very large files [>100Gb] in with a print statement at each loop iteration, and noted that if I was printing every hunderth iteration I had a speedup, but it could be dependent on how the loop was changed...)

UPDATE 2: I need/want to accept an answer. To me both have been instructive and they are both useful. I tested both and they both need further work before being able to benchmark the improvement (if any, see update above). The tie handle is a less known feature that I loved, that's why I accepted that. They were both equally close to the desired answer in my opinion. Thank you all very much for the discussion and the insights.

Answer 1

I don't see a general solution on CPAN, either. But this is straightforward enough with tied filehandles. Something like

use Symbol;
sub Print::Buffer::new {
    my ($class,$mode,$file,@opts) = @_;
    my $x = Symbol::gensym;
    open ($x, $mode, $file) or die "failed to open '$file': $!";
    tie *$x, "Print::Buffer", fh => $fh, @opts;
    $x;
}

sub Print::Buffer::TIEHANDLE {
    my $pkg = shift;
    my $self = { @_ };
    $self->{bufsize} //= 16 * 1024 * 1024;
    $self->{_buffer} = "";
    bless $self, $pkg;
}

sub Print::Buffer::PRINT {
    my ($self,@msg) = @_;
    $self->{buffer} .= join($,,@msg);
    $self->_FLUSH if length($self->{buffer}) > $self->{bufsize};
}

sub Print::Buffer::_FLUSH {
    my $self = shift;
    print  {$self->{fh}}  $self->{buffer};
    $self->{buffer} = "";
}

sub Print::Buffer::CLOSE {
    my $self = shift;
    $self->_FLUSH;
    close( $self->{fh} );
}

sub Print::Buffer::DESTROY {
    my $self = shift;
    $self->_FLUSH;
}

#  ----------------------------------------

my $fh1 = Print::Buffer->new(">", "/tmp/file1", 
                             bufsize => 16*1024*1024);

for (my $i=1; $i<1000; $i++) {
    print $fh1 "This string will be eventually printed ($i/1000)\n";
}