9 replies to this topic

[salakin]

can anyone explain heap sort briefly .......

[mebob]

I suppose you would first need to understand what a heap is: Heap (data structure) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[RhetoricalRuvim]

Heap is basically an address space, somewhere in memory, used for program(/s) to allocate memory; I'm not sure if it's used for opening files, making new sockets, or other uses, though.

[mebob]

Actually the heap I am referring to isn't what you are thinking of. Its a type of tree, where each child node has a lower value then its parent.

[RhetoricalRuvim]

The stack?

[WingedPanther]

A heap is a data structure, think like a balanced tree, only different. I haven't studied it, so won't say much beyond that.

[RhetoricalRuvim]

Do you mean a binary tree? What's balanced?

[mebob]

A heap is a tree based data structure. Not necessarily a type of binary tree, but it could possibly fall under that category as well.

[RhetoricalRuvim]

Balanced means it has the same number of branches within every branch?

This is different from the type of heap operating systems use, right?

[mebob]

No, balanced means it attempts to keep its height low. And yes, it is different than the "heap" used in reference to memory.