Queue operations (enqueue, dequeue) in Data Structures Theory - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Queue operations (enqueue, dequeue)

📖 Scenario: Imagine you are managing a line of customers waiting to buy tickets at a movie theater. You need to keep track of who is in line and in what order they arrived.

🎯 Goal: You will build a simple queue system that can add customers to the line (enqueue) and remove customers from the line when they buy their tickets (dequeue).

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list called queue to hold customer names.

Create a variable called max_size to limit the queue length.

Add a function called enqueue to add a customer to the queue if there is space.

Add a function called dequeue to remove the first customer from the queue.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Queues are used in many places like lines at stores, print job management, and customer service systems to keep things organized and fair.

💼 Career

Understanding queue operations is important for software developers, system administrators, and anyone working with data processing or task scheduling.

1

Create the initial queue list

Create an empty list called queue to represent the line of customers waiting.

Data Structures Theory

# Create an empty list called queue
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use square brackets [] to create an empty list in Python.

2

Set the maximum queue size

Create a variable called max_size and set it to 5 to limit how many customers can wait in line.

Data Structures Theory

queue = []
# Create a variable max_size and set it to 5
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign the number 5 to the variable max_size.

3

Add the enqueue function

Write a function called enqueue that takes a parameter customer. Inside the function, add the customer to the queue list only if the length of queue is less than max_size.

Data Structures Theory

queue = []
max_size = 5

# Define the enqueue function
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use len(queue) to check the current number of customers and queue.append(customer) to add a new one.

4

Add the dequeue function

Write a function called dequeue that removes and returns the first customer from the queue list if the queue is not empty.

Data Structures Theory

queue = []
max_size = 5

def enqueue(customer):
    if len(queue) < max_size:
        queue.append(customer)

# Define the dequeue function
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use queue.pop(0) to remove the first customer from the list.