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Collection Classes in .net - the Queue

This is the seventh part of an article on collection classes in .net with C#.  This part covers the Queue.

For the first part see http://www.audacs.co.uk/ViewPage.aspx?PageID=512

For the next part on the LinkedList see http://www.audacs.co.uk/ViewPage.aspx?PageID=520

The queue is very simillar to the stack.  the key difference is that this is a FIFO structure.   FIFO stands for first in first out.  This class has been created to help us model real world scenarios where such behaviour is required.  For example a printer queue.

Like the stack there are two versions of this class. The original version and a Generic version.  These can be found at:

System.Collections.Queue
System.Collections.Generic.Queue

You can place any object at all in the queue since it is defined to hold a collection of objects.  The generic versions of course also requires that you define this whereas the non generic version requires some casting within your code.

Lets have a look at a simple program which shows us how we can use the queue.  Note that we use an Enqueue method to add something to the queue and we use a Dequeue method to remove an item.

Below we will show the code for a version using the original queue and then one using the generic version.  The output from both which is shown afterwards is identical in both cases.

Original Version

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
 
namespace Queue
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            System.Collections.Queue people = new System.Collections.Queue();
 
            people.Enqueue("Fred");
            people.Enqueue("Dave");
            people.Enqueue("Sarah");
            people.Enqueue("Lisa");
            people.Enqueue("Bill");
 
            foreach (string person in people)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(person);
            }
 
            string dequeuedPerson = (string)people.Dequeue();
 
            Console.WriteLine();
 
            Console.WriteLine(dequeuedPerson);
 
            Console.Read();
        }
    }
}
 


Generic Version 

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
 
namespace Queue
{
    class GenericQueue
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            System.Collections.Generic.Queue<string> people = new System.Collections.Generic.Queue<string>();
 
            people.Enqueue("Fred");
            people.Enqueue("Dave");
            people.Enqueue("Sarah");
            people.Enqueue("Lisa");
            people.Enqueue("Bill");
 
            foreach (string person in people)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(person);
            }
 
            string dequeuedPerson = people.Dequeue();
 
            Console.WriteLine();
 
            Console.WriteLine(dequeuedPerson);
 
            Console.Read();
        }
    }
}
 


So the only real difference is that we declare the queue as a generic type and then when we do a Dequeue then there is no casting involved.

The output from both programs looks like this:

 

And thats about it for the Queue. For the next part on the LinkedList see http://www.audacs.co.uk/ViewPage.aspx?PageID=520