Heaps and Priority Queues
A heap data structure is a tree-based data structure in which each node of the tree has a specific relationship with other nodes, and they are stored in a specific order. Depending upon the specific order of the nodes in the tree, heaps can be of different types, such as a min heap and a max heap.
A priority queue is an important data structure that is similar to the queue and stack data structures that stores data along with the priority associated with them. In this, the data is served according to the priority. Priority queues can be implemented using an array, linked list, and trees; however, they are often implemented using a heap as it is very efficient.
In this chapter, we will learn the following:
- The concept of the heap data structure and different operations on it
- Understanding the concept of the priority queue and its implementation using Python
