Deque

The Deque type implements a double-ended queue using a list of blocks. This data structure supports constant-time insertion/removal of elements at both ends of a sequence.

Usage:

a = Deque{Int}()
isempty(a)          # test whether the dequeue is empty
length(a)           # get the number of elements
push!(a, 10)        # add an element to the back
pop!(a)             # remove an element from the back
pushfirst!(a, 20)   # add an element to the front
popfirst!(a)        # remove an element from the front
front(a)            # get the element at the front
back(a)             # get the element at the back

Note: Julia's Vector type also provides this interface, and thus can be used as a deque. However, the Deque type in this package is implemented as a list of contiguous blocks (default size = 2K). As a deque grows, new blocks may be created and linked to existing blocks. This way avoids the copying when growing a vector.

Benchmark shows that the performance of Deque is comparable to Vector on push!, and is noticeably faster on unshift! (by about 30% to 40%).