Queue Design — Bounded and Real Constraints

Real queues can be bounded, blocking, or lossy; your API must decide overflow policy and whether producers wait.

Try this in Python

class BoundedQueue:
    def __init__(self, cap: int) -> None:
        self.cap = cap
        self.buf: list[int | None] = [None] * cap
        self.head = self.size = 0

    def push(self, x: int) -> bool:
        if self.size == self.cap:
            return False
        self.buf[(self.head + self.size) % self.cap] = x
        self.size += 1
        return True

    def pop(self) -> int | None:
        if self.size == 0:
            return None
        x = self.buf[self.head]
        self.head = (self.head + 1) % self.cap
        self.size -= 1
        return x


q = BoundedQueue(2)
print(q.push(1), q.push(2), q.push(3))
print(q.pop(), q.pop(), q.pop())

Key takeaways

• Ring buffer with head+size avoids shifting elements.
• Return False/None or raise—pick one contract and document it.
• Same skeleton extends to circular queues.