Lab 3: Ring Buffers and Guitar Strings
Bard College – Computer Science – Data Structures
In this lab we’ll explore an array-based implementation of a ring (or circular) buffer. Ring buffers are used for many things like producer/consumer tasks, computing moving averages, log files, and in this lab, simulating sound waves. We will follow our textbook authors’ project pretty closely: http://introcs.cs.princeton.edu/java/assignments/guitar.html

Be sure to read the pages 147–151 from Chapter 1 of the Intro to CS by the authors of our textbook. The book’s ResizingArrayQueue is also a good resource. 

Your ring buffer implementation should use an array as its underlying instance variable

Employ the testing based approach we learned last week. Use assertions for pre- and post-conditions and invariants whenever you can. Start with a main method for RingBuffer that uses it in a simple, straight-forward manner.

Modifications:

  1. Your RingBuffer should only throw an exception if you dequeue an empty buffer, if you try and enqueue a full buffer you should just overwrite the oldest entry.
 ringbuffer.enqueue(2)
 ringbuffer.enqueue(3)
 ringbuffer.enqueue(5)
 ringbuffer.enqueue(7)
 ringbuffer.enqueue(11)

  1. The second constructor in GuitarString is not necessary:  GuitarString(double[] init) 

BONUS

  1. Your RingBuffer class should be generic (i.e., ring buffers of Doubles, but also any type).
 RingBuffer<Double> ringbuffer = new RingBuffer<Double>(3);
  1. Implement an Iterator for your RingBuffer .
 for (double d: ringbuffer){
     StdOut.println(d);
 }