Hollow heaps

Thomas Dueholm Hansen, Haim Kaplan, Robert E. Tarjan, Uri Zwick

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

We introduce the hollow heap, a very simple data structure with the same amortized efficiency as the classical Fibonacci heap. All heap operations except delete and delete-min take O(1) time, worst case as well as amortized; delete and delete-min take O(logn) amortized time on a heap of n items. Hollow heaps are the simplest structure to achieve these bounds. Hollow heaps combine two novel ideas: the use of lazy deletion and re-insertion to do decrease-key operations and the use of a dag (directed acyclic graph) instead of a tree or set of trees to represent a heap. Lazy deletion produces hollow nodes (nodes without items), giving the data structure its name.

Original languageEnglish
Article number42
JournalACM Transactions on Algorithms
Volume13
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 2017

Funding

FundersFunder number
Sino-Danish Center for the Theory of Interactive Computation
Natur og Univers, Det Frie Forskningsråd12-126512
Danmarks Grundforskningsfond
German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development1161/2011
United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation2012338
National Natural Science Foundation of China61061130540
Israel Science Foundation822-10, 1841/14
Israeli Centers for Research Excellence4/11

    Keywords

    • Amortized analysis
    • Data structures
    • Heaps
    • Priority queues

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