Queue (abstract Data Type)
In computer science, a queue ( /ˈkjuː/ KEW) is a particular kind of abstract data type or collection in which the entities in the collection are kept in order and the principal (or only) operations on the collection are the addition of entities to the rear terminal position and removal of entities from the front terminal position. This makes the queue a First-In-First-Out (FIFO) data structure. In a FIFO data structure, the first element added to the queue will be the first one to be removed. This is equivalent to the requirement that once an element is added, all elements that were added before have to be removed before the new element can be invoked. A queue is an example of a linear data structure.
Queues provide services in computer science, transport, and operations research where various entities such as data, objects, persons, or events are stored and held to be processed later. In these contexts, the queue performs the function of a buffer.
Queues are common in computer programs, where they are implemented as data structures coupled with access routines, as an abstract data structure or in object-oriented languages as classes. Common implementations are circular buffers and linked lists.
Read more about Queue (abstract Data Type): Real-world Examples, Queue Implementation
Famous quotes containing the words queue and/or data:
“English people apparently queue up as a sort of hobby. A family man might pass a mild autumn evening by taking the wife and kids to stand in the cinema queue for a while and then leading them over for a few minutes in the sweetshop queue and then, as a special treat for the kids, saying “Perhaps we’ve time to have a look at the Number Thirty-One bus queue before we turn in.””
—Calvin Trillin (b. 1940)
“To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it—all my life.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)