6.10. Binary Heap Operations¶

The basic operations we will implement for our binary heap are as follows:

BinaryHeap() creates a new empty binary heap.
insert(k) adds a new item to the heap.
get_min() returns the item with the minimum key value, leaving the item in the heap.
delete() returns the item with the minimum key value, removing the item from the heap.
is_empty() returns True if the heap is empty, False otherwise.
size() returns the number of items in the heap.
heapify(list) builds a new heap from a list of keys.

ActiveCode 1 demonstrates the use of some of the binary heap methods. Notice that no matter what order we add items to the heap, the smallest is removed each time.