AlgoKit
I wrote an open source library called AlgoKit, available via NuGet. It contains:
- Implicit d-ary heaps (ArrayHeap),
- Binomial heaps,
- Pairing heaps.
The code has been extensively tested. I definitely recommend you to give it a try.
Example
var comparer = Comparer.Default;
var heap = new PairingHeap(comparer);
heap.Add(3, "your");
heap.Add(5, "of");
heap.Add(7, "disturbing.");
heap.Add(2, "find");
heap.Add(1, "I");
heap.Add(6, "faith");
heap.Add(4, "lack");
while (!heap.IsEmpty)
Console.WriteLine(heap.Pop().Value);
Why those three heaps?
The optimal choice of implementation is strongly input-dependent — as Larkin, Sen, and Tarjan show in A back-to-basics empirical study of priority queues, arXiv:1403.0252v1 [cs.DS]. They tested implicit d-ary heaps, pairing heaps, Fibonacci heaps, binomial heaps, explicit d-ary heaps, rank-pairing heaps, quake heaps, violation heaps, rank-relaxed weak heaps, and strict Fibonacci heaps.
AlgoKit features three types of heaps that appeared to be most efficient among those tested.
Hint on choice
For a relatively small number of elements, you would likely be interested in using implicit heaps, especially quaternary heaps (implicit 4-ary). In case of operating on larger heap sizes, amortized structures like binomial heaps and pairing heaps should perform better.
