NIST

first-in, first-out

(definition)

Definition: A policy that items are processed in order of arrival. A queue implements this.

See also last-in, first-out.

Note: Same as first come, first served. A breadth-first search checks newly encountered nodes first-in, first-out. Often written as FIFO.

Author: PEB

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Entry modified 17 December 2004.
HTML page formatted Mon Feb 2 13:10:39 2015.

Cite this as:
Paul E. Black, "first-in, first-out", in Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures [online], Vreda Pieterse and Paul E. Black, eds. 17 December 2004. (accessed TODAY) Available from: http://www.nist.gov/dads/HTML/firstinfrstt.html