heap in data structures and algorithms
Dear,
A heap is a complete binary tree, and the binary tree is a tree in which the node can have utmost two children. Before knowing more about the heap data structure, you should know about the complete binary tree. A complete binary tree is a binary tree in which all the levels except the last level, i.e., leaf node should be completely filled, and all the nodes should be left-justified. There are two types of the heap:
- Min Heap
- Max heap
The value of the parent node should be less than or equal to either of its children. In other words, the min-heap can be defined as, for every node i, the value of node i is greater than or equal to its parent value except the root node. Mathematically, it can be defined as:
A[Parent(i)] <= A[i]
A heap is a tree-based data structure in which all the nodes of the tree are in a specific order. You can read certain articles on GeeksForGeeks for better understanding.
Hope this helps!
