# Circular Buffer A data structure that uses a single, fixed-size buffer as if it were connected end-to-end. A circular buffer, cyclic buffer or ring buffer is a data structure that uses a single, fixed-size buffer as if it were connected end-to-end. A circular buffer first starts empty and of some predefined length. For example, this is a 7-element buffer: [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ] Assume that a 1 is written into the middle of the buffer (exact starting location does not matter in a circular buffer): [ ][ ][ ][1][ ][ ][ ] Then assume that two more elements are added — 2 & 3 — which get appended after the 1: [ ][ ][ ][1][2][3][ ] If two elements are then removed from the buffer, the oldest values inside the buffer are removed. The two elements removed, in this case, are 1 & 2, leaving the buffer with just a 3: [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][3][ ] If the buffer has 7 elements then it is completely full: [6][7][8][9][3][4][5] When the buffer is full an error will be raised, alerting the client that further writes are blocked until a slot becomes free. The client can opt to overwrite the oldest data with a forced write. In this case, two more elements — A & B — are added and they overwrite the 3 & 4: [6][7][8][9][A][B][5] Finally, if two elements are now removed then what would be returned is not 3 & 4 but 5 & 6 because A & B overwrote the 3 & the 4 yielding the buffer with: [ ][7][8][9][A][B][ ] To run the tests simply run the command `go test` in the exercise directory. If the test suite contains benchmarks, you can run these with the `-bench` flag: go test -bench . For more detailed info about the Go track see the [help page](http://exercism.io/languages/go). ## Source Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_buffer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_buffer) ## Submitting Incomplete Problems It's possible to submit an incomplete solution so you can see how others have completed the exercise.