Question

Describe in detail what is the difference between Stacks and Queues?

Following rubric will be used to grade your discussion.

What is Stacks? 15 points

What is Queues?15 points

The difference?10 points

Answer 1

1. Stack:

A stack is a container of objects that are inserted and removed according to the last-in first-out (LIFO) principle. In the pushdown stacks only two operations are allowed: push the item into the stack, and pop the item out of the stack. A stack is a limited access data structure - elements can be added and removed from the stack only at the top. push adds an item to the top of the stack, pop removes the item from the top. A helpful analogy is to think of a stack of books; you can remove only the top book, also you can add a new book on the top.

2. Queue:

A queue is a container of objects (a linear collection) that are inserted and removed according to the first-in first-out (FIFO) principle. An excellent example of a queue is a line of students in the food court of the UC. New additions to a line made to the back of the queue, while removal (or serving) happens in the front. In the queue only two operations are allowed enqueue and dequeue. Enqueue means to insert an item into the back of the queue, dequeue means removing the front item. The picture demonstrates the FIFO access.

3. Differences:

The difference between stacks and queues is in removing. In a stack we remove the item the most recently added; in a queue, we remove the item the least recently added.