2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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stack
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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n. The set of things a person has to do in the future. One speaks of the
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next project to be attacked as having risen to the top of the stack. I'm
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afraid I've got real work to do, so this'll have to be pushed way down on my
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stack. I haven't done it yet because every time I pop my stack something new
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gets pushed. If you are interrupted several times in the middle of a
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conversation, My stack overflowed means I forget what we were talking about.
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The implication is that more items were pushed onto the stack than could be
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remembered, so the least recent items were lost. The usual physical example
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of a stack is to be found in a cafeteria: a pile of plates or trays sitting
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on a spring in a well, so that when you put one on the top they all sink
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down, and when you take one off the top the rest spring up a bit. See also
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push and pop. ( The Art of Computer Programming , second edition, vol. 1, p.
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236) says: Many people who realized the importance of stacks and queues
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independently have given other names to these structures: stacks have been
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called push-down lists, reversion storages, cellars, nesting stores, piles,
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last-in-first-out ( LIFO ) lists, and even yo-yo lists! The term stack was
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originally coined by Edsger Dijkstra, who was quite proud of it.
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