How do you design FIFO queue with variable data size?

Question

I'm just working on the FIFO queue (the simple one, just what's pushed first, pops at first) with the variable data size but I'm not sure with the way I'm designing it. The data types I will store there will be known in advance and let's say will be the same for each instance of this class. I was thinking about using TList where the records with the following definition will be stored (@David - it's for D2007, so I have no Generics.Collections available :)

type
  PListItem = ^TListItem;
  TListItem = record
    Size: Integer; // size of the data pointed by the following member
    Data: Pointer; // pointer to the target data reserved in memory
  end;

with the implementation like this (I'm pretending here that everything works fine, so no exception handling is used)

type
  TListQueue = class
private
  FList: TList;
public
  constructor Create;
  destructor Destroy; override;
  procedure Clear;
  procedure Push(const Value; const Size: Integer);
  procedure Pop(var Value; var Size: Integer);
end;

constructor TListQueue.Create;
begin
  inherited;
  FList := TList.Create;
end;

destructor TListQueue.Destroy;
begin
  Clear;
  FList.Free;
  inherited;
end;

procedure TListQueue.Push(const Value; const Size: Integer);
var ListItem: PListItem;
begin
  New(ListItem);
  ListItem.Size := Size;
  ListItem.Data := AllocMem(Size);
  Move(Value, ListItem.Data^, Size);
  FList.Add(ListItem);
end;

procedure TListQueue.Pop(var Value; var Size: Integer);
var ListItem: PListItem;
begin
  if FList.Count > 0 then
  begin
    ListItem := FList.Items[0];
    Size := ListItem^.Size;
    Move(ListItem.Data^, Value, ListItem.Size);
    FreeMem(ListItem.Data, ListItem.Size);
    Dispose(ListItem);
    FList.Delete(0);
  end;
end;

procedure TListQueue.Clear;
var I: Integer;
    ListItem: PListItem;
begin
  for I := 0 to FList.Count - 1 do
  begin
    ListItem := FList.Items[I];
    FreeMem(ListItem.Data, ListItem.Size);
    Dispose(ListItem);
  end;
  FList.Clear;
end;

My question is:

Is this the efficient way how to make FIFO queue (for data types like strings, streams, records) with size from several bytes to about 1MB (in case of stream) ?

Thanks a lot

Answer 1

Why not use:

type
  PListItem = ^TListItem;
  TListItem = record
    Size: Integer; // size of the data pointed by the following member
    Data: Pointer; // pointer to the target data reserved in memory
    Next: PListItem; // pointer to the next data entry, or nil for the last one.
  end;

You would also need a var Root: PListItem = nil; and allocate/deallocate items with New() and Dispose(). You might want to add a var LastItem: PListItem = nil; which contains the last item in your list so you don't have to walk through the whole list every time when you want to add an item.
While still primitive compared to modern "object-based solutions", a single linked-list is still very efficient for a FIFO solution. Not too elegant but hey, it works well enough. If you want more elegance, build a class around this all!