Eviction Policies
A cache is a small space pretending to be a big one, and the pretense only works if it's clever about what to keep. When a bounded cache fills up, every new item forces out an old one — and which one you evict determines your hit rate, which determines whether the cache is worth having at all. Eviction policies are the algorithms that make this choice, and understanding them (especially the workhorse, LRU) is essential to building caches that actually stay effective.
A cache is a small space pretending to be a big one, and the pretense only works if it's clever about what to keep. When a bounded cache fills up, every new item forces out an old one — and which one you evict determines your hit rate. Eviction policies are the algorithms that make this choice.