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Stacks of answers to sift through
After a couple of weeks’ respite, we have almost certainly the last word on stacks or queues. We were using piles of paving slabs as a metaphor for a stack, for reasons which escape us right now.
The question was: is first-in-first-out (FIFO) a stack or a queue, because there are some patents for FIFO stacks extant, and the concrete thing proved a point that we forget – unless the slabs were stacked sideways.
Then the European Patent Office got involved. Says employee Bob Harle: ‘Your correspondent neglected to point out that in the case of sideways slabs you can insert slabs wherever there is to be a space and don’t have to take the first or last.’
He suggests calling it the ‘Wherever there is a space, in; any that catches your eye, out’ stack, which would be WTIASIATCYEO. He suggests we call it a RINO (random in, nicest out) stack instead – the exact way we decide who to serve first at the bar of the real-life Stack.
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