What is a Heap

Introduction

Heaps are advanced data structures based on Binary Trees, which is why they are commonly known as Binary Heaps.

🔍 What is a Binary Heap?

A Binary Heap is a complete Binary Tree which satisfies the Heap ordering property.

Heaps are implemented through Arrays, where each element of the array corresponds to a node in the binary tree and the value inside the node is called a “key”. Heaps can also be implemented using trees with a node class and pointers, but it’s usually easier and more space efficient to use an array.

All the nodes are ordered according to the rules listed below:

1. A Heap tree must be a Complete Binary Tree.
2. The nodes must be ordered according to the Heap Property.

Common Misconception

There is also a common misconception that the elements of a Heap are sorted. They are not at all sorted; in fact, the only key feature of a Heap is that the largest or smallest element is always placed at the top (parent node) depending on what kind of Heap we are using.

Moreover, this Data Structure ...