Subjects         Chips & Upgrades   Computers   News   Opinions   Peripherals Systems Software   SysOpt

internet.commerce Be a Commerce Partner

Search for more hardware and systems terms . . .

queue Last modified: Friday, February 13, 2004

(v.) To line up. In computer science, queuing refers to lining up jobs for a computer or device. For example, if you want to print a number of documents, the operating system (or a special print spooler) queues the documents by placing them in a special area called a print buffer or print queue. The printer then pulls the documents off the queue one at a time. Another term for this is print spooling . The order in which a system executes jobs on a queue depends on the priority system being used. Most commonly, jobs are executed in the same order that they were placed on the queue, but in some schemes certain jobs are given higher priority. (n.) (1) A group of jobs waiting to be executed. (2) In programming, a queue is a data structure in which elements are removed in the same order they were entered. This is often referred to as FIFO (first in, first out). In contrast, a stack is a data structure in which elements are removed in the reverse order from which they were entered. This is referred to as LIFO (last in, first out).