Abstract
Recently, Fredman and Tarjan invented a new, especially efficient form of heap (priority queue) called theFibonacci heap. Although theoretically efficient, Fibonacci heaps are complicated to implement and not as fast in practice as other kinds of heaps. In this paper we describe a new form of heap, called thepairing heap, intended to be competitive with the Fibonacci heap in theory and easy to implement and fast in practice. We provide a partial complexity analysis of pairing heaps. Complete analysis remains an open problem.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
M. R. Brown, “Implementation and analysis of binomial queue algorithms,”SIAM J. Comput. 7 (1978), 298–319.
C. A. Crane, “Linear lists and priority queues as balanced binary trees,” Technical Report STAN-CS-72-259, Computer Science Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 1972.
R. W. Floyd, “Algorithm 245: Treesort 3,”Comm. ACM 7 (1964), 701.
M. L. Fredman and R. E. Tarjan, “Fibonacci heaps and their uses in improved network optimization algorithms,”J. Assoc. Comput. Mach., submitted; alsoProc. 25th Annual IEEE Symp. on Found. of Comput. Sci. (1984), 338–346.
H. N. Gabow, Z. Galil, and T. Spencer, “Efficient implementation of graph algorithms using contraction,”Proc. 25th Annual IEEE Symp. on Found. of Comput. Sci. (1984).
H. N. Gabow, Z. Galil, T. Spencer, and R. E. Tarjan, “Efficient algorithms for finding minimum spanning trees in undirected and directed graphs,”Combinatorica, to appear.
D. W. Jones, “An empirical comparison of priority queues and event set algorithms,”Comm. ACM, submitted.
D. E. Knuth,The Art of Computer Programming, Vol. 1: Fundamental Algorithms, Second Edition, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1973.
D. E. Knuth,The Art of Computer Programming, Vol. 3:Sorting and Searching, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1973.
D. D. Sleator and R. E. Tarjan, “Self-adjusting binary trees, Proc. 15th AnnualACM Symp. on Theory of Comput. (1983), 235–245.
D. D. Sleator and R. E. Tarjan, “Self-adjusting heaps,”SIAM J. Comput., to appear.
D. D. Sleator and R. E. Tarjan, “Self-adjusting binary search trees,”J. Assoc. Comput. Mach. 32 (1985), 652–686.
R. E. Tarjan,Data Structures and Network Algorithms, CBMS 44, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Philadelphia, PA, 1983.
R. E. Tarjan, “Amortized computational complexity,”SIAM J. Alg. Disc. Meth. 6 (1985), 306–318.
J. Vuillemin, “A data structure for manipulating priority queues,”Comm. ACM 21 (1978), 309–314.
J. W. J. Williams, “Algorithm 232: Heapsort,”Comm. ACM 7 (1964), 347–348.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Research partially supported by National Science Foundation Grant MCS 82-04031 and by Bell Communications Research
Research partially supported by National Science Foundation Grant DCR 85-14922
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fredman, M.L., Sedgewick, R., Sleator, D.D. et al. The pairing heap: A new form of self-adjusting heap. Algorithmica 1, 111–129 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01840439
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01840439