fifo
NounOpen English WordNet
Noun (1)
- inventory accounting in which the oldest items (those first acquired) are assumed to be the first soldSynonyms: first in first outType of inventory accounting
What does it mean? Question 1 of today’s quiz
Webster's Dictionary (1913)
Origin: acronym, First In First Out.
1. accounting an accounting method in which goods in inventory are valued at the price of the most recent acquisition of each type of goods, and those used up from inventory are valued at the cost of those first acquired.
Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), from GCIDE 0.54 · with additions: GCIDE editors
Free On-line Dictionary of Computing
<algorithm> (FIFO, or "queue") A data structure or hardware buffer from which items are taken out in the same order they were put in. Also known as a "shelf" from the analogy with pushing items onto one end of a shelf so that they fall off the other. A FIFO is useful for buffering a stream of data between a sender and receiver which are not synchronised - i.e. not sending and receiving at exactly the same rate. Obviously if the rates differ by too much in one direction for too long then the FIFO will become either full (blocking the sender) or empty (blocking the receiver). A Unix pipe is a common example of a FIFO.
A FIFO might be (but isn't ever?) called a LILO - last-in last-out. The opposite of a FIFO is a LIFO (last-in first-out) or "stack".
(1999-12-06)