Index vs. Search? (take III)

[Stuart Burnfield]

"Fred Ridder" <docudoc -at- hotmail -dot- com> said:
 > While the reference to a spike may be pretty obscure for many
 > users, at least the engineers didn't win on this one or else it
 > might have been called a push-down stack. I remember in a class
 > on PL/1 programming I took many, many years ago, push-down stacks
 > were explained in terms of the plate dispensers in cafeterias

That's right--you 'push' items onto the stack and 'pop' to retrieve them 
from the stack.

This is the background to the all-time funniest geek joke I ever heard: 
we were discussing Pringles potato crisps, the slogan for which in the 
UK is "Once you pop, you can't stop." One of the developers riposted, 
"That is, until you return stack underflow."

We laughed until we cried(*).

Stuart

(*) I guess you had to be there. And be an old programmer...