In Python, heapq.heapify doesn't take cmp or key functions as arguments like sorted does

Question

I\'m using python2.6. Is it available in higher version of python?
Else is there any other way I can maintain priority queues for list of objects of non-trivial classes?

Answer 1

Just write an appropriate __lt__ method for the objects in the list so they sort correctly:

class FirstList(list):
    def __lt__(self, other):
        return self[0] < other[0]

lst = [ ['a', 3], ['b', 1] ]

lst = [FirstList(item) for item in lst]

Only __lt__ is needed by Python for sorting, though it's a good idea to define all of the comparisons or use functools.total_ordering.

You can see that it is working by using two items with the same first value and different second values. The two objects will swap places when you heapify no matter what the second values are because lst[0] < lst[1] will always be False. If you need the heapify to be stable, you need a more complex comparison.

Answer 2

With these Heap and HeapBy classes I tried to simplify the usage of heapq. You can use HeapBy to pass a key sorting function.

Note that Raymond said that his solution won't work if priorities are repeated and the values are not sortable. That's why I added an example of HeapBy with a NonComparable class.

I took the __lt__ idea from agf's solution.

Usage:

# Use HeapBy with a lambda for sorting
max_heap = HeapBy(key=lambda x: -x)
max_heap.push(3)
max_heap.push(1)
max_heap.push(2)
assert max_heap.pop() == 3
assert max_heap.pop() == 2
assert max_heap.pop() == 1

# Use Heap as a convenience facade for heapq
min_heap = Heap()
min_heap.push(3)
min_heap.push(1)
min_heap.push(2)
assert min_heap.pop() == 1
assert min_heap.pop() == 2
assert min_heap.pop() == 3

# HeapBy also works with non-comparable objects.
# Note that I push a duplicated value
# to make sure heapq will not try to call __lt__ on it.

class NonComparable:
    def __init__(self, val):
        self.val = val

# Using non comparable values
max_heap = HeapBy(key=lambda x: -x.val)
max_heap.push(NonComparable(1))
max_heap.push(NonComparable(1))
max_heap.push(NonComparable(3))
max_heap.push(NonComparable(2))
assert max_heap.pop().val == 3
assert max_heap.pop().val == 2
assert max_heap.pop().val == 1
assert max_heap.pop().val == 1

Classes:

import heapq

class Heap:
    """
    Convenience class for simplifying heapq usage
    """

    def __init__(self, array=None, heapify=True):
        if array:
            self.heap = array
            if heapify:
                heapq.heapify(self.heap)
        else:
            self.heap = []

    def push(self, x):
        heapq.heappush(self.heap, x)

    def pop(self):
        return heapq.heappop(self.heap)


class HeapBy(Heap):
    """
    Heap where you can specify a key function for sorting
    """

    # Item only uses the key function to sort elements,
    # just in case the values are not comparable
    class Item:
        def __init__(self, value, key):
            self.key = key
            self.value = value
        def __lt__(self, other):
            return self.key(self.value) < other.key(other.value)

    def __init__(self, key, array=None, heapify=True):
        super().__init__(array, heapify)
        self.key = key

    def push(self, x):
        super().push(self.Item(x, self.key))

    def pop(self):
        return super().pop().value

Answer 3

I don't know if this is better but it is like Raymond Hettinger's solution but the priority is determined from the object.

Let this be your object and you want to sort by the the x attribute.

class Item:                                 
    def __init__(self, x):
        self.x = x

Then have a function which applies the pairing

def create_pairs(items):
     return map(lambda item: (item.x, item), items)

Then apply the function to the lists as input into heapq.merge

list(heapq.merge(create_pairs([Item(1), Item(3)]), 
                 create_pairs([Item(2), Item(5)])))

Which gave me the following output

[(1, <__main__.Item instance at 0x2660cb0>),
 (2, <__main__.Item instance at 0x26c2830>),
 (3, <__main__.Item instance at 0x26c27e8>),
 (5, <__main__.Item instance at 0x26c2878>)]

Answer 4

The traditional solution is to store (priority, task) tuples on the heap:

pq = [ ]
heappush(pq, (10, task1))
heappush(pq, (5, task2))
heappush(pq, (15, task3))
priority, task = heappop(pq)

This works fine as long as no two tasks have the same priority; otherwise, the tasks themselves are compared (which might not work at all in Python 3).

The regular docs give guidance on how to implement priority queues using heapq:

http://docs.python.org/library/heapq.html#priority-queue-implementation-notes

Answer 5

Well, this is terrible and awful and you definitely shouldn't do it… But it looks like the heapq module defines a cmp_lt function, which you could monkey patch if you really wanted a custom compare function.