Algorithms For Dummies

Performing specialized searches  

using a binary heap

As with BST, you have many ways to implement a binary heap. Writing one by 

hand or using a dictionary does work well, but relying on a package makes things 

considerably faster and more reliable. The 

heapq

 package comes with Python, so 

you don’t even need to install it. You can find the documentation for this package 

at 

https://docs.python.org/3/library/heapq.html

. The following example 

shows how to build and search a binary heap using 

heapq

:

import heapq

  

data = {3:'White', 2:'Red', 1:'Green', 5:'Orange',

        4:'Yellow', 7:'Purple', 0:'Magenta'}

  

heap = []

for key, value in data.items():

    heapq.heappush(heap, (key, value))

heapq.heappush(heap, (6, 'Teal'))

heap.sort()

  

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CHAPTER 7