dequeue_exn t
raises if length t = 0
. The idiom for dequeueing a single element
is:
if length t > 0 then dequeue_exn t else ...
The idiom for dequeueing until empty is:
while length t > 0 do
let a = dequeue_exn t in
...
done
These idioms work in the presence of threads because OCaml will not context switch
between the length t > 0
test and the call to dequeue_exn
. Also, if one has only
a single thread calling dequeue_exn
, then the idiom is obviously OK even in the
presence of a context switch.
The queue maintains an internal pool of unused elements, which are used by enqueue
and returned to the pool by dequeue_exn
. enqueue
creates a new element if the
pool is empty. Nothing shrinks the pool automatically. One can call
clear_internal_pool
to clear the pool, so that all unused elements will be reclaimed
by the garbage collector.