Question

We have all read about or heard about the stack class, but many of us have probably never found a reason to use the LIFO object. I am curious to hear of real world solutions that used this object and why.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.collections.stack.aspx

I recently saw an example where a programmer used a stack to keep track of his current position while traversing a hierarchical data source. As he moved down the hierarchy, he pushed his position identifier on to the stack and as he moved back up he popped items off the stack. I thought this was a very efficent way to keep track of his current position in a mamoth hierarchy. I had never seen this before.

Anyone else have any examples?

Answer 1

I’ve used them to keep track of Undo and Redo actions.

I use an interface something like this:

interface ICommand
{
    void Execute();
    void Undo();
    string Description { get; }
}

Undo and Redo are both of type Stack<ICommand>. Then I create a concrete class for a given action. In the class’s constructor, I pass in any information I’d need to hold on to. Execute does the action initially, and also redoes it; Undo undoes it, obviously. It works like this:

• Undo an action: Pop the Undo stack and add to the Redo stack.
• Redo an undone action: Pop the Redo stack and add to the Undo stack again.
• Perform a new action: Add to the Undo stack and clear the Redo stack (since the state is no longer consistent).

I found that you have to take care that you’re really undoing what was done. For instance, say you have a UI with two listboxes, and each has five items in it. Your action might be to click a button to move everything on the left list to the right list (so it now has ten, and the left list has zero).

The undo action is not to move everything back; the undo action is to move back only the five you actually moved, and leave the others.