how to find number of elements in a Circular Queue

Question

how do i find the number of items in a circular queue?

|front - rear| doesnt always work.

is there one equation to know how many element is in a cir

Answer 1

actually the size would be,

size = front > rear ? (MAX - front + rear + 1) : (rear - front + 1);

or one can go for a generic formula:

size = abs(abs(MAX - front) - abs(MAX -rear));//this works in every situation