What does pop stand for in computers?

Answer 1

In email, a local e-mail client can use the Post Office Protocol version 3 (POP3), an application-layer internet standard protocol, to retrieve e-mail from a remote or local server over a TCP/IP connection. With POP3, a user id and password is sent to the server and the server than responds to email message requests. Using POP3, emails are downloaded and stored on the computer with the email client. The retrieved emails are optionally deleted or retained on the server for possible retrieval from other computers. Alternative protocols for accessing email from mail servers is IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) that does not download emails for storage on your computer, and MAPI (Messaging Application Programming Interface).

There are many email client programs that can use POP3 including Thunderbird, Outlook, Evolution, Eudora, Opera Mail and Windows mail.

In programming, POP refers to an activity performed on a stack. A stack is a data structure that can hold multiple data items in such a way that only one item is accessible at a time and that item will be the latest one added to the stack. Once the latest one is removed, the item put into the stack before it can be accessed and removed. The action of putting (pushing) an item onto the stack is commonly called "push" and the action of removing (popping) an item from the stack is called "pop". The first item put to a stack will always be the last one removed.

A stack is also called a push down stack, or a LIFO (for Last In First Out) structure.