C Primer Plus®, Third Edition

Simulating with a Queue

Well, the queue works! Now let's do something more interesting with it. Many real-life situations involve queues. For instance, customers queue in banks and in supermarkets, airplanes queue at airports, and tasks queue in multitasking computer systems. You can use the queue package to simulate such situations.

Suppose, for example, that Sigmund Landers has set up an advice booth in a mall. Customers can purchase one, two, or three minutes of advice. To ensure a free flow of foot traffic, mall regulations limit the number of customers waiting in line to ten (conveniently equal to the program's maximum queue size.) Suppose people show up randomly and that the time they want to spend in consultation is spread randomly over ...