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Hands-On Artificial Intelligence for Search

You're reading from   Hands-On Artificial Intelligence for Search Building intelligent applications and perform enterprise searches

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Product type Paperback
Published in Aug 2018
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781789611151
Length 124 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
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Author (1):
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Devangini Patel Devangini Patel
Author Profile Icon Devangini Patel
Devangini Patel
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Toc

The priority queue data structure

A priority queue is a queue in which each element has a priority. For example, when passengers are waiting in a queue to board a flight, families with young children and business class passengers usually take priority and board first; then, the economy class passengers board. Let's look at another example. Suppose that three people are waiting in a queue to be attended to at a service counter, and an old man steps in at the end of the queue. Considering his age, the people in the queue might give him a higher priority and allow him to go first. Through these two examples, we can see that the elements in a priority queue have priorities, and they are processed in order of those priorities.

Just like in queuing, we have operations to insert elements into a priority queue. The insert operation inserts an element with a specific priority. Consider...

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