Queue from Two Stacks

Implement queue behavior with an input stack and an output stack.

Algorithm

The replay uses the same three values in every language, so this Bash DSA implementation can be compared directly with the rest of the DSA track.

Basic Implementation

basic.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

render() {
  local out=""
  for value in "$@"; do
    if [[ -n "$out" ]]; then out+=" -> "; fi
    out+="$value"
  done
  printf '%s\n' "$out"
}

in_stack=()
out_stack=()
for value in 10 20 30; do in_stack+=("$value"); done
while (( ${#in_stack[@]} > 0 )); do out_stack+=("${in_stack[-1]}"); unset 'in_stack[-1]'; done
removed=()
while (( ${#out_stack[@]} > 0 )); do removed+=("${out_stack[-1]}"); unset 'out_stack[-1]'; done
render "${removed[@]}"

Complexity

Time: O(1) amortized per operation
Space: O(n)

Implementation notes

Keep the explicit stack/queue operations. Library shortcuts that only produce the final list hide the data-structure behavior this lesson is meant to replay.
The final output uses a deterministic a -> b -> c format for cross-language comparison.

input stack Enqueue pushes new values onto the input stack.

output stack When the output stack is empty, transferring all input values reverses them into dequeue order.