What's faster: inserting into a priority queue, or sorting retrospectively?

Question

What\'s faster: inserting into a priority queue, or sorting retrospectively?

I am generating some items that I need to be sorted at the end. I was wondering, what is

Answer 1

I think that the insertion is more efficient in almost all cases where you are generating the data (i.e. don't already have it in a list).

A priority queue is not your only option for insertion as you go. As mentioned in other answers a binary tree (or related RB-tree) is equally efficient.

I would also check how the priority queue is implemented - many are based on b-trees already but a few implementations are not very good at extracting the elements (they essentially go through the entire queue and look for the highest priority).