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Data Structures and Collections
Queues

Queues

TL;DR

  • collections.deque is an excellent default choice for implementing a FIFO queue data structure in Python

  • list objects can be used as queues, but this is generally NOT recommended due to slow performance.

A queue is a collection of objects that supports fast first-in, first-out (FIFO) semantics for inserts and deletes.

The insert and delete operations are sometimes called enqueue and dequeue. Unlike lists or arrays, queues typically do NOT allow for random access to the objects they contain.

Performance-wise, a proper queue implementation is expected to take $O(1)$ time for insert and delete operations.

list — Terribly Sloooow Queues

It’s possible to use a regular list as a queue but this is NOT ideal from a performance perspective. Because inserting or deleting an element at the beginning requires shifting all of the other elements by one, requiring O(n) time.

Therefore, it is NOT recommend using a list as a makeshift queue in Python (unless you’re only dealing with a small number of elements).

collections.deque – Fast & Robust Queues

  • A double-ended queue that supports adding and removing elements from either end in $O(1)$ time (non-amortized).

  • Implemented as doubly-linked lists

    • Excellent and consistent performance for inserting and deleting elements,
    • but poor $O(n)$ performance for randomly accessing elements in the middle of the stack.

  • Is a great default choice if you’re look- ing for a queue data structure in Python’s standard library.

queue.Queue – Locking Semantics for Parallel Computing

  • Synchronized and provides locking semantics to support multiple concurrent producers and consumers.

Example

>>> from queue import Queue
>>> q = Queue()
>>> q.put('eat')
>>> q.put('sleep')
>>> q.put('code')

>>> q
<queue.Queue object at 0x1070f5b38>

>>> q.get()
'eat'
>>> q.get()
'sleep'
>>> q.get()
'code'
>>> q.get_nowait()
queue.Empty
>>> q.get()
# Blocks / waits forever...

multiprocessing.Queue – Shared Job Queues

  • A shared job queue implementation that allows queued items to be processed in parallel by multiple concurrent workers.
  • Makes it easy to distribute work across multiple processes in order to work around the GIL limitations.
  • Can store and transfer any pickle-able object across process boundaries.

Example

>>> from multiprocessing import Queue
>>> q = Queue()
>>> q.put('eat')
>>> q.put('sleep')
>>> q.put('code')

>>> q
<multiprocessing.queues.Queue object at 0x1081c12b0>

>>> q.get()
'eat'
>>> q.get()
'sleep'
>>> q.get()
'code'
>>> q.get()
# Blocks / waits forever...