(data structure)
Definition: A collection of items in which only the earliest added item may be accessed. Basic operations are add (to the tail) or enqueue and delete (from the head) or dequeue. Delete returns the item removed. Also known as "first-in, first-out" or FIFO.
Formal Definition: It is convenient to define delete or dequeue in terms of remove and a new operation, front. The operations new(), add(v, Q), front(Q), and remove(Q) may be defined with axiomatic semantics as follows.
Also known as FIFO.
Generalization (I am a kind of ...)
abstract data type.
Specialization (... is a kind of me.)
bounded queue.
See also deque, stack, priority queue, first come, first served.
Author: PEB
Demonstrations with dynamic array, fixed array, and linked list implementations.
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Entry modified 23 April 2007.
HTML page formatted Mon Apr 23 09:23:15 2007.
Cite this as:
Paul E. Black, "queue", in
Dictionary of Algorithms and Data
Structures [online], Paul E. Black, ed.,
U.S. National Institute of
Standards and Technology. 23 April 2007. (accessed TODAY)
Available from: http://www.nist.gov/dads/HTML/queue.html