Linear Crawl
In a standard array implementation, both the `front` and `rear` pointers start at `-1`. As you enqueue and dequeue, both pointers strictly move forward (to the right). They never move backward!
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Before writing code, it's crucial to understand the high-level mechanics of how a Queue manages its underlying memory array.
In a standard array implementation, both the `front` and `rear` pointers start at `-1`. As you enqueue and dequeue, both pointers strictly move forward (to the right). They never move backward!
Because pointers only move right, if you enqueue 5 items and dequeue 5 items, your pointers are at the end of the array. The queue claims to be "Full", even though indices 0-4 are completely empty!
This massive flaw in Linear Queues is exactly why Circular Queues were invented, allowing pointers to wrap back around to index 0 using the modulo operator.