Abstract
The word heap is used in a couple of different contexts in Computer Science. A heap sometimes refers to an area of memory used for dynamic (i.e. run-time) memory allocation. Another meaning, and the topic of this chapter, is a data structure that is conceptually a complete binary tree. Heaps are used in implementing priority queues, the heapsort algorithm, and some graph algorithms. Heaps are somewhat like binary search trees in that they maintain an ordering of the items within the tree. However, a heap does not maintain a complete ordering of its items. This has some implications for how a heap may be used.
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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
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Lee, K.D., Hubbard, S. (2015). Heaps. In: Data Structures and Algorithms with Python. Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13072-9_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13072-9_9
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Online ISBN: 978-3-319-13072-9
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